“For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.” Romans 2:14-16 (this will be the last Acton Insight. I will not burden you with my notes on Adam Smith, Jefferson vs. Hamilton, or discussions concerning organic farming. Remember, I still want people to keep reading my blog.) Acton Insight 6: “How to talk about Natural Law” (Dr. Budziszewski) It was way too early in the morning to think. Especially when you consider my first class of the second day at the Acton Institute was titled, “Natural Law and the Classical Apologetics of Thomas Aquinas.” Hmm, that sounds like a real barn burner! But then in walked our teacher for the morning: a short hobbit looking man, sporting a neatly trimmed gray beard and brandishing an impish smile. His jolly demeanor sparked my curiosity. His name was Dr. Budziszewski (try saying that five times fast); and he began his class with an array of very interesting questions: “If we are just a random conglomeration of cells, why are human beings so perfectly adapted to live in a meaningless world?” “What does it mean to take the nature of our humanity serious?” “How can we speak with skeptical neighbors, college students and friends about true reality when most the time they are operating under ‘motivated irrationality’?” Dr. Budziszewski said the majority of the students in his classroom no longer seem to be persuaded by logic and reason because they are perfectly comfortable giving up coherence in order to get what they want. And what makes matters worse is that modern education aims for glibness over rationality. People would rather associate with the free-thinking and progressive crowd even if they were wrong; than being labeled as a drippy traditionalist. Who cares if someone is intellectually consistent? What matters most to people is who your friends are and what crowd you hang with. But then he said there are those special times when people can actually hear, when their ears are open. And it is in those moments we need to be ready to give them answers. We need to be prepared to have up-close and personal, one-on-one, heart-to-heart conversations. It is only in this context where barriers will come down and the mental smokescreens most people live with can be cleared away. And the best tool to break through the hardness of the post-modern’s heart is by appealing to “Natural Law.” Defining Natural Law Natural refers to the idea that “God has not left himself without a witness!” And that witness is imprinted on every soul. Law means the he has designed universal rules and measures that the mind recognizes as right and true for the common good. After teaching an introductory class on this topic, Dr. Budziszewski once had a student come up to him and ask, “How can you say murder is wrong for everyone? Isn’t that just our Western construct that we have projected on the rest of the world? We can’t assume to know what other cultures think is right or wrong?” And he replied back to the student, “Are you in doubt personally about the wrongness of murder? I am not asking you to speculate about others, not what irrationally, can be; but I want to know what ‘you know’ to be true, in your heart. Do you really think murder of innocents is ever O.K.?” This is what it means to appeal to a skeptic with “Natural Law.” Classical Natural Law Dr. Budziszewski makes the case that true arguments of Natural Law have been dumbed down by John Locke and other enlightenment thinkers. If you want to really understand the full-scope of Natural Law Theory you must go back to the writings of Thomas Aquinas. He lists four “witnesses” that God has woven into the fabric of reality that let us know that this world, and your life, has meaning and order. We need to be perfectly clear that no argument will fully convince anyone, but our goal is to open the human heart up to taking God and his word serious. The four witnesses are as follows...
All of these witnesses occur apart from God’s revelation. They whisper wisdom to the heart of the person. They are like Abel’s spilled blood that cries out to your soul in the silence of the night. Using Natural Law The skeptic is a tough nut to crack. So instead of forcing an argument on him from the outside through persuasion, let the Natural Law that's inside of him do the convincing. Our job is to point out what they already know. We are to call attention to the obvious, appeal to their deep consciousness. Dr. Budziszewski believes our job as apologists (defenders of Christian faith) is to help people to connect the dots that Natural Law has already hard-wired in their rational thinking. Ask the Pro-Choice advocate why suicidal depression is higher in woman who have abortions than women who go full term? Could it be the witness of natural consequences? Ask the atheist why he wants things to be meaningful in a meaningless world? Could it be the witness of design? Ask the agnostic liberal why black lives matter? Could it be the witness of patterned beings? He ended with this last tip of argument: "Don't be afraid of silence." In other words, once you ask the question let the person wrestle with the answer themselves. Our job is to get people to think again, to look at the world as it really is and give them the space to doubt. In fact, once the seed is planted let the Holy Spirit do the rest of the work...he really is a lot smarter and more convincing than you!
1 Comment
Jason Tanner
8/20/2015 11:40:19 am
"Put a stone in their shoe", as a heard someone say.
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