07/08: Evangelicals Should Learn to Argue in Terms of Natural Law
Category: Religion & Public Policy
Posted by: an okie gardener
So argues Ryan Anderson in the latest First Things. Worth reading and reflecting on.
For my own position see this post and its links.
I don't think a Protestant embrace of Natural Law reasoning is as simple for Protestants as Anderson asserts. Note that he quotes only Martin Luther King, Jr. as his example of a Protestant using natural law argument (indirectly, at best, since King is quoting Augustine and Aquinas). The Lutheran and Reformed traditions have had some serious suspicions about the ability of human reason to know God's will apart from revelation. Anabaptist groups are not that interested, historically, in convincing the larger culture of anything by argument. And American evangelicals, generally speaking, have little experience in laying out a vision for the good life, individually and socially, without quoting Scripture.
For my own position see this post and its links.
I don't think a Protestant embrace of Natural Law reasoning is as simple for Protestants as Anderson asserts. Note that he quotes only Martin Luther King, Jr. as his example of a Protestant using natural law argument (indirectly, at best, since King is quoting Augustine and Aquinas). The Lutheran and Reformed traditions have had some serious suspicions about the ability of human reason to know God's will apart from revelation. Anabaptist groups are not that interested, historically, in convincing the larger culture of anything by argument. And American evangelicals, generally speaking, have little experience in laying out a vision for the good life, individually and socially, without quoting Scripture.
Tocqueville wrote:
"The following illustrations of the Natural Law are collected from such sources as come readily to the hand of one who is not a professional historian. The list makes no pretence of completeness. It will be noticed that writers such as Locke and Hooker, who wrote within the Christian tradition, are quoted side by side with the New Testament. This would, of course, be absurd if I were trying to collect independent testimonies to the Tao.
But I am not trying to prove its validity by the argument from common consent. Its validity cannot be deduced. For those who do not perceive its rationality, even universal consent could not prove it.
The idea of collecting independent testimonies presupposes that 'civilizations' have arisen in the world independently of one another; or even that humanity has had several independent emergences on this planet. The biology and anthropology involved in such an assumption are extremely doubtful. It is by no means certain that there has ever (in the sense required) been more than one civilization in all history. It is at least arguable that every civilization we find has been derived from another civilization and, in the last resort, from a single centre—'carried' like an infectious disease or like the Apostolical succession."
See the discussion here:
http://www.religion-online....