What Is Natural Law?
by Paul Copan
From a jail in Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr. discussed civil disobedience, noting that "there are two kinds of laws: just and unjust" and that there is a "natural law" to which we are subject. He was right: We shouldn't say we know right and wrong only because "the Bible says so." Romans 2:15 states that God's moral law has been written on the hearts of all human beings. This innate or intuitive awareness is beautifully illustrated in C. S. Lewis's Abolition of Man. There he lists various universally recognized moral laws and virtues—impartial justice, truthfulness, kindness, mercy, marital fidelity, respect for human life. They have been regarded as true for all from ancient Babylon and Greece to Native America, from Jews and Christians to Hindus and Confucians. Yet while humans are capable of recognizing basic moral principles, they may suppress their conscience, harden their hearts, and become morally dull.
Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas spoke of certain "laws." He said there is an eternal law, which God alone knows and by which God created and governs the universe. Because God created us in His image (as moral, reasoning beings), we are capable of recognizing a self-evident natural law, the reflection of God's eternal law in the created order. This law is known by all human beings whether or not they are aware of God's special revelation through Israel and Jesus Christ, as inscripted in the Bible. God has placed within us a disposition to have moral knowledge. Unless we suppress our conscience, we naturally know basic moral truths. General virtues and vices, Thomas Reid wrote, "must appear self-evident to every man who has a conscience, and has taken the pains to exercise this natural power of his mind"
("Of Morals").
Some will respond, "There can be moral atheists. We don't need God for morality." However, atheists have been made in the image of God. Though they deny God's existence, they have still been designed by God to function properly and even to create human law for the good of society—the law that, to varying degrees, applies the natural law placed within us. Atheists ignore the very basis of goodness—God, who created them and who is the highest Good. (See J. Budziszewski, The Revenge of Conscience and Written on the Heart.)
Does the Moral Argument Show There Is a God?
by Paul Copan
Here's a good rule of thumb about morality: Never believe those who say murder or rape may not really be wrong. Such people haven't looked deeply enough into the basis for moral belief—and just aren't functioning properly. (Usually, when personally threatened with murder or rape, they change their tune!) Color-blind persons need help distinguishing red from green. Similarly, morally malfunctioning persons (those denying basic moral truths) don't need arguments; they need psychological and spiritual help. Like logical laws, moral laws and instincts are basic to well-functioning humans.
As part of God's general self-revelation, all people—unless they ignore or suppress their conscience—can and should have basic moral insight, knowing truths generally available to any morally sensitive person (Rm 2:14-15). We instinctively recognize the wrongness of torturing or murdering the innocent or committing rape. We just know the rightness of virtues (kindness, trustworthiness, unselfishness). A person's failure to recognize these insights reveals something defective; he hasn't looked deeply enough into the grounds of his moral beliefs.
Philosophers and theologians past and present have noted the connection between God's existence and objective moral values. A moral argument for God's existence goes like this: (a) If objective moral values exist, then God exists. (b) Objective moral values do exist. (c) Therefore, God exists. If objective moral values exist, where do they come from? The most plausible answer is God's nature or character. Even many atheists have admitted that objective moral values (which they deny) don't fit an atheistic world but would serve as evidence for God's existence.
We live in a time when many claim everything is relative, yet ironically they believe they have "rights." But if morality is just the product of evolution, culture, or personal choice, then rights—and moral responsibility—do not truly exist. But if they do, this assumes humans have value in and of themselves as persons, no matter what their culture or science textbooks say. But what, then, is the basis for this value? Could this intrinsic value just emerge from impersonal, mindless, valueless processes over time (naturalism)?
An Eastern philosophical approach to ethics is monism (sometimes called "pantheism"): because everything is one, no ultimate distinction between good and evil exists. This serves to support relativism. A more natural context for ethics is the theistic one, in which we've been made by a good God to resemble Him in certain important (though limited) ways. The Declaration of Independence correctly notes that we've been endowed by our Creator with "certain inalienable rights." Human dignity isn't just "there." Dignity and rights come from a good God (despite human sinfulness).
Can't atheists be moral? Yes! Like believers, they've been made in the image of God and thus have the ability to recognize right and wrong.
Doesn't God Himself conform to certain moral standards outside Himself? No, God's good character is the very standard; God simply acts and naturally does what is good. Universal moral standards have no basis if God doesn't exist.
Notable Christian Apologist: Cornelius Van Til
Cornelius Van Til (1895–1987), Reformed theologian and apologist, was born in the Netherlands and completed his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1927. He taught apologetics for one year at Princeton Theological Seminary but left when the board voted for a reorganization to allow for liberal viewpoints. Van Til and other conservative professors who left Princeton founded Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Van Til taught at Westminster from its beginning in 1929 for roughly a half century.
Van Til's studies of philosophical idealism convinced him that all human thought is governed by presuppositions. (Hence Van Til is sometimes called a "presuppositionalist," though he was not enthusiastic about that label.) Ultimate presuppositions, he believed, cannot be proved by usual methods, since they serve as the basis of all proof. But they can be proved "transcendentally," by showing that they are necessary for all rational thought and must be true if there is to be any meaning or order in the world. Van Til sought to reconstruct Christian apologetics so that it would establish the Christian God as the presupposition of human thought, rather than as one rational conclusion among many.
He disparaged the "traditional method" of defending Christianity by theistic proofs and historical evidences, because he believed that tradition began with data considered intelligible apart from God and thereby tried to prove God's existence. On the contrary, Van Til argued, if we concede that anything is intelligible apart from the God of Scripture, we have lost the battle at the outset. So we should, rather, use a transcendental method, showing that the various forms of non-Christian thought ("would-be autonomous reasoning," as he put it) reduce to meaninglessness and that only the Christian worldview can make sense of anything.
Some critics said that Van Til left no room for the use of evidence in apologetics. He replied that evidence is useful when employed within a transcendental argument based on biblical presuppositions.
But is this not circular, to prove Christianity on the basis of Christian presuppositions?
Yes, said Van Til, in a sense. But he offered two arguments in defense of his view. First, every system of thought is circular when arguing its most fundamental presuppositions (e.g., a rationalist can defend the authority of reason only by using reason). Second, the Christian circle is the only one that renders reality intelligible on its own terms.
Non-Christian thought, he argues, collapses into meaninglessness because of the effects of sin on human mental powers. The unbeliever knows God but suppresses the truth (Rm 1:18-32). There is therefore an antithesis between Christian thought and unbelieving thought, between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world. Although the unbeliever knows and states truth occasionally, he does that only by inconsistency with his presuppositions and by relying inconsistently on the Christian worldview.
What About Those Who Have Never Heard About Christ?
by William Lane Craig
The conviction that salvation is available through Christ alone permeates the NT (see, e.g., Ac 4:12; Eph 2:12). This raises the troubling question of the fate of those who never hear the gospel.
What, exactly, is the problem here supposed to be? The universalist alleges that the following statements are logically inconsistent:
1. God is all powerful and all loving.
2. Some people never hear the gospel and are lost.
But why think that 1 and 2 are logically incompatible? There is no explicit contradiction between them. If the universalist is claiming that they are implicitly
contradictory, he must be assuming some hidden premises that would bring out this contradiction.
Although universalists have not been forthcoming about their hidden assumptions, the logic of the problem would suggest something akin to these points:
3. If God is all powerful, He can create a world in which everybody hears the gospel and is freely saved.
4. If God is all loving, He prefers a world in which everybody hears the gospel and is freely saved.
But are these premises necessarily true?
Consider 3. It seems incontrovertible that God could create a world in which everybody hears the gospel. But so long as people are free, there is no guarantee that everybody in such a world would be freely saved. In fact, there is no reason to think the balance between saved and lost in such a world would be any better than is that balance in the actual world. Hence 3 is not necessarily true, and the universalist's argument is false.
But what about 4? Is it necessarily true? Let us suppose for the sake of argument that there are possible worlds that are feasible for God in which everyone hears the gospel and freely accepts it. Does God's being all loving compel Him to prefer one of these worlds over a world in which some persons are lost? Not necessarily, for these worlds might have other, overriding deficiencies that make them less preferable. For example, suppose that the only worlds in which everybody freely believes the gospel and is saved are worlds with only a handful of people in them. Must God prefer one of these sparsely populated worlds over a world in which multitudes believe in the gospel and are saved, even though other persons freely reject His grace and are lost? No. Thus the universalist's second assumption is not necessarily true, so that his argument is doubly invalid.
As a loving God, God wants as many people as possible to be freely saved and as few as possible to be lost. His goal, then, is to achieve an optimal balance between these, to create no more of the lost than are necessary to attain a certain number of the saved. It is possible that in order to create this many people who will be freely saved, God also had to create this many people who will be freely lost.
It might be objected that an all-loving God would not create people whom He knew will be lost but who would have been saved if only they had heard the gospel. But how do we know there are any such persons? It is reasonable to assume that many people who never hear the gospel would not have believed the gospel if they had heard it. Suppose, then, that God has so ordered the world that all persons who never hear the gospel are precisely such people. In that case, anybody who never hears the gospel and is lost would have rejected the gospel and been lost even if he had heard it. Thus, it is possible that:
5. God has created a world that has an optimal balance between saved and lost, and those who never hear the gospel and are lost would not have believed in it even if they had heard it.
So long as 5 is even possibly true, it shows that there is no incompatibility between an all-powerful, all-loving God and some people's never hearing the gospel and being lost.
(For another perspective, see the article in Luke 10.)
How Does One Develop a Christian Mind?
by J. P. Moreland
"I want to develop a Christian mind, but I don't know how." This attitude is both common and understandable. That we are to develop our minds as Christians is not in doubt. We are admonished to love God with our mind (Mt 22:37), be transformed by its renewal (Rm 12:2), and be prepared to give thoughtful answers to questions about the faith (1 Pt 3:15).
A mature Christian mind has two aspects to it. First, it is a mind that has formed the habit of being focused on God constantly throughout the day. It is a mind preoccupied with God and directed regularly toward Him in prayer and meditation
(Ps 16:8; Is 26:3; Lk 18:1; Rm 12:12; 1 Th 5:16-18). But how can one do this and still perform one's daily tasks? Fortunately, people can do more than one thing at the same time. While driving or centering one's attention on a task, one can still be aware of God in the boundaries of one's attention. And one can bring God to the center of prayerful focus at various times throughout the day.
Two habits can make it easier for you to focus on God constantly. First, memorize four or five Bible passages that really speak to you. Each passage can be from one to several verses in length. Now, make it a practice to pray these passages to the Lord throughout the day. As you pray through a passage phrase by phrase, use it to pray about things of concern to you. Second, regularly ponder these passages or other scriptural readings, thinking of what they mean, of how you can internalize them, and of how you can promote them to others.
The second aspect of a mature Christian mind is one that sees all of life in light of a Christian worldview and is growing in intellectual excellence. A worldview is the sum total of all the things one believes, especially in regard to reality, truth, knowledge, and value. A Christian worldview is a biblically grounded set of beliefs about all of life, from work, recreation, and finances to God, life after death, and morality. One tries to think of all of life in light of the teachings of holy Scripture and, more specifically, of the Lord Jesus. There is no secular/sacred separation in such a mind.
All of life is an occasion for discipleship and worship for a mature Christian mind. Further, an intellectually excellent mind is one that is informed, that makes important distinctions when a less mature mind fails to do so, and that has deeper and deeper insights into issues of importance. To develop such excellence, one must regularly read, listen to tapes, and expose oneself to excellent teaching. One must also be willing to engage others—believers and unbelievers—in conversations about important worldview issues. Such regular practice, if combined with a growing ability to listen nondefensively, will bring motivation and opportunity for regular growth in intellectual excellence.