Sunday, March 22, 2009

Lofton Responds Again

John Lofton left another comment at Positive Liberty on the child of God, child of the Devil issue. Like Jim Babka, I realize I am not going to make any progress with Mr. Lofton on whether the Bible teaches everyone is a child of God. In fact, I would concede that Mr. Lofton's view is entirely defensible on uber-Calvinistic, fundamentalist grounds (i.e., that uber-fundamentalist Calvinists are properly reading what the Bible says, though I think there are many other sound, hermeneutic approaches).

But I am interested in showing Mr. Lofton that his personal theology is not the "American View," that of the Declaration of Independence. And that he might want to think about changing the name of his website to for instance, "the Calvinist View," or the "Christian Reconstructionist View." The following is a relevant portion of Mr. Lofton's comment:

ROWE: But more importantly, there is a rich history in Christendom of looking to more than just the Bible to discover God’s will.

LOFTON: In “history,” yes. But, not in the Bible itself. God’s Will is discernible only in God’s Word, what God Himself has said.

ROWE: The Roman Catholics, after Aquinas, who ultimately believed the Bible infallible…

LOFTON: Sorry, but if they believed the Bible infallible they would have stuck to the Bible only, as the Bible says we must do. Scripture neither says nor indicates that the Bible is insufficient and that we must go outside of Scripture for anything else.

ROWE: have their natural law tradition that supplements scripture.

LOFTON: However, Scripture says nothing about God’s Word needing anything to “supplement” it.


Now, this seems well within the mainstream of Calvinism. It was Francis Schaeffer's view. It's also Dr. Gregg Frazer's view (and I think John MacArthur's as well). Here is Dr. Frazer on why the natural law is not biblical:

II Corinthians 3:3 has NOTHING to do with natural law. It simply says that the quality of the lives of the people to whom Paul ministered were his letter of commendation -- the affirmation of his ministry.

Romans 2:14-15 refers to God's moral law, not some "law of nature." I challenge [anyone] to find "law of nature" or "Nature's God" in a concordance of the Bible -- you won't find either term because they're not biblical terms.


Gary North has also argued the natural law is not biblical. Yet, Jordan J. Ballor of the Acton Institute (a Thomistic thinktank) makes the orthodox Protestant case for the natural law.

Now, the Declaration of Independence invokes this very natural law, written by God and discovered by reason alone, as the source of its authority. There is argument as to whether what Locke (and America's Founders repeating his ideas) meant by "the laws of nature and nature's God" is the same as what Aquinas and Aristotle meant. Further there is debate as to whether America's Founders, like the Christian natural law thinkers, believed the Bible infallible and the natural law should act as a handmaiden (i.e., a "supplement") for the Bible. OR whether reason should trump and the Bible should supplement the findings of man's reason.

As Dr. Frazer noted:

So, I fully recognize that they lived in an age of “Christendom” and that it had some influence upon them. I also discuss Aquinas – the difference between [theistic rationalism -- what Dr. Frazer argues was the "political theology of the American Founding"] and Aquinas is what they did when reason and revelation appeared to conflict. For Aquinas, reason bowed to revelation and was designed to supplement revelation. For the [theistic rationalists], it was the other way around. Reason was the ultimate standard and revelation was a supplement to it. In fact, they determined what counted as legitimate revelation based on their reason. The key to your [James] Wilson quote (which I include in my dissertation, by the way) is which of the two ways of looking at law takes priority when they appear to conflict. Wilson said: “Reason and conscience can do much; but still they stand in need of support and assistance.” And “the Scriptures support, confirm, and corroborate, but do not supersede the operations of reason and the moral sense.” For Wilson, Scripture will be called upon to support and assist reason – not the reverse. That is the position of [theistic rationalism]. It is the opposite of the position of Aquinas – and Christianity.


Now, we can debate whether Dr. Frazer properly interprets James Wilson an an enlightenment rationalist who believed man's reason should trump scripture when the two may have conflicted (as Jefferson, J. Adams, and Franklin clearly believed). Wilson's position may well have been closer to Aquinas' than Dr. Frazer admits. However, the point is America's Founders turned to this law of nature [that included newly discovered "natural rights," again another concept not found in the Bible, or, some argue, even in the teachings of Aristotle or Aquinas] for their political theology. They may have disagreed on what could trump what, but, they could agree that this natural law discovered by reason that has its antecedents in Aristotle, was brought into Christianity by Aquinas, and then lived on it the works of Protestant thinkers like the Anglican Richard Hooker, whom Jocke Locke quoted, not only existed but would form the basis of their political order. And ultimately it was John Locke's newly discovered "rights teachings" which formed the centerpiece of the Declaration of Independence.

Yet, Mr. Lofton, seems to embrace the Declaration of Independence:

ROWE: However, to the extent that there is an “America View” of political theology represented by the Declaration of Independence and the personal beliefs the most important Founding Fathers, such holds that all human beings are children of God. It’s precisely that view that makes human rights “unalienable” and consequently “universal.” If the non-elect or non-regenerate are “children of the Devil,” Mr. Lofton, I would ask, why should a “Christian” government treat them equally as the Declaration of Independence demands?

LOFTON: Actually, the D of I says nothing about WHY we all have unalienable “rights” other than that we do, they come from God and it’s the role of government to protect such God-given rights. And since a Christian government must obey God’s Word this means that such government is no respecter of persons, meaning all persons (elect/non-elect/saved/unsaved) are under God’s Law. As St. Paul says: Love of neighbor means obeying the law of God re: your neighbor (Romans 13:10) — whether your neighbor is or is not saved..


Since Mr. Lofton rejects the natural law as even a supplement to an infallible Bible, it seems to me that the Declaration should speak very little, if not at all to him and his ideal political world. Thus, he should either give up his affinity for the Declaration of Independence, or rethink his position about the validity of natural law discovered by reason, used to supplement the Bible.

Finally I'll note the most notable Calvinist Founding Father, Dr. John Witherspoon, President of Princeton University, though he did give some fiery Calvinist sermons, when he taught politics at Princeton did not teach Calvin or the Bible but rather turned to Scottish rationalism, and, you got it, the laws of nature, discovered by reason. You can read his Lectures on Moral Philosophy here.

16 comments:

Tom Van Dyke said...

If James Wilson had believed that reason "supersedes" the scriptures---which is your argument and I suppose Dr, Fraser's---Wilson would have written that. He didn't.

“The Scriptures support, confirm, and corroborate, but do not supersede the operations of reason and the moral sense.”

is part of the nuanced 400-year old Thomistic [Aquinas] argument that the scriptures are entirely reasonable and therefore cannot be in conflict with reason.

“Reason and conscience can do much; but still they stand in need of support and assistance.”

This is classic Thomism, that reason discovers the natural law without scripture, but reason is incomplete [or flawed, since man himself is flawed] and therefore requires revelation to get all the way to the larger truth. This is plainly what James Wilson is saying here.

This Thomistic view was held by the Scholastics, the Catholic thinkers who followed Aquinas, but most importantly, as you wrote, by the Protestant Rev. Richard Hooker, whom Locke praises and apparently follows in his own writings, and by James Wilson himself, who praises both Hooker and Locke as explicitly Christian thinkers.

There are arguments out there that Calvin is somehow a theological godfather of the Founding. There is something to be said for the rise of individuality against central doctrinal control [the papacy, the Magisterium], but a strict reading of Calvin [Servetus, etc.] leaves the thesis vulnerable to arguments you make here and elsewhere.


Your argument is against John Calvin, the interpretations of him, and is with today's neo-Calvinists, or Calvin restorationists, whichever we wish to call them. But as the influence of strict Calvinism was obviously waning at the time of the Founding [Puritanism had begun to mutate into Congregationalism and then unitarianism], this is more a sidelight than the main event in considerating Christianity and the Founding, much as some would like to move it to the center ring.

One can do a much better accounting of the Founding without Calvin that he can without Aquinas, Hooker, and Locke.

Tom Van Dyke said...

And to Mr Lofton:

Learn it. Live it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_of_God

"Judeo-Christianity" in a nutshell, BTW.

Jonathan Rowe said...

Tom,

One small problem I have with your analysis is that Wilson ALSO says that scripture is "incomplete" and in need of support. His position is that both "reason" AND "scripture" are incomplete and in need of one another. I can agree that Wilson's "Works" can be interpreted contra Frazer (that he is not arguing "reason trumps revelation") but I ALSO do not see him saying "revelation trumps reason." At BEST for your side, I see him elevating reason AND revelation to the same level as both necessary, but incomplete, complementary and in need of one another.

Tom Van Dyke said...

All Scottish Enlightenments are not created equal, it seems.

Witherspoon's "moderate" Scottish Enlightenment excluded Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, but also stood against "David Hume 'and other infidel writers'" and materialism. Which is logical. To argue the Bible against the rationalist David Hume would be pointless.

At least according to this.

In other words, Witherspoon argued the moderate Scottish Enlightenment of Hutcheson and Reid against the materialist, empiricist Scottish Enlightenment of Hume, since the former was congenial to religion but the latter was hostile to it, and posed the greatest threat to it.

Tom Van Dyke said...

Jon, you're coming from a secular viewpoint. But imagine coming from a religious viewpoint, and imagine that John Locke is, too:

"That which hinders this, is that select bundle of doctrines, which it has pleased every sect to draw out of the scriptures, or their own inventions, with an omission (and, as our unmasker would say, a contempt) of all the rest. These choice truths (as the unmasker calls his) are to be the standing orthodoxy of that party, from which none of that church must recede, without the forfeiture of their christianity, and the loss of eternal life."

In other words, all the various sects are making claims, and some of them are wild claims---and most importantly, competing claims!---about what the Bible says. Therefore, only reason can begin to sort them out.

This quote from Locke is entirely consistent with what I wrote above on James Wilson and what I believe is his understanding of Locke:

"But natural religion, in its full extent, was no-where, that I know, taken care of, by the force of natural reason. It should seem, by the little that has hitherto been done in it, that it is too hard a task for unassisted reason to establish morality in all its parts, upon its true foundation, with a clear and convincing light. And it is at least a surer and shorter way, to the apprehensions of the vulgar, and mass of mankind, that one manifestly sent from God, and coming with visible authority from him, should, as a king and law-maker, tell them their duties; and require their obedience; than leave it to the long and sometimes intricate deductions of reason, to be made out to them."

Tom Van Dyke said...

See also Kretzmann on natural theology in Aquinas' "Summa contra gentiles", p. 39 in the text and p. 51 in the PDF, which is congenial to the above Locke quote.

Our Founding Truth said...

Here is Dr. Frazer on why the natural law is not biblical:


II Corinthians 3:3 has NOTHING to do with natural law. It simply says that the quality of the lives of the people to whom Paul ministered were his letter of commendation -- the affirmation of his ministry.

Romans 2:14-15 refers to God's moral law, not some "law of nature." I challenge [anyone] to find "law of nature" or "Nature's God" in a concordance of the Bible -- you won't find either term because they're not biblical terms.>

Frazer needs help; and a lot at that. He obviously doesn't know what the law of nature is. Mr. Frazer, read and learn.

The law of nature is the oracle of God's moral law inside a human being, that is the law and the Gospel God has put inside us. The law of nature is exactly what you deny it is! It is the conscience which tells us what is right from wrong according to God's Word. If you can't tell this is the law of nature, you never will:

Romans 2:14-15 (King James Version)

14For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:

15Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) [bold face mine]

Tom, the easy way to prove reason is inferior to revelation is the only way reason can be an authority is if it's written down; and there you go. Pretty easy isn't it. Right reason, as Hooker called it, must always be checked by the scripture, doing it the other way around would be silly; man's flawed mind is not divine.

Jonathan Rowe said...

Congrats OFT, you just failed the challenge Dr. Frazer posed.

The law of nature defines as what man discovers about God's will from reason wholly unaided by revelation; the way you define it, "reason" is not necessary as you just need to look it up in the Bible. Hence the entire concept of "the law of nature" is superfluous, not needed if the Bible is all that is necessary.

Our Founding Truth said...

The law of nature defines as what man discovers about God's will from reason wholly unaided by revelation; the way you define it, "reason" is not necessary as you just need to look it up in the Bible. Hence the entire concept of "the law of nature" is superfluous, not needed if the Bible is all that is necessary.>

That's what you and the secularists says lonang is. Jesus, Paul, Locke, the founding fathers, and me, say it's both reason and revelation, that is the same thing, and cannot be separated! (emphasis added)

Our Founding Truth said...

Only losers running this blog would allow someone like you to post your drivel on here, but, just as you have that little mouse running in your head, make no mistake, you wouldn't have the nads to say that to my face.

Tom Van Dyke said...

Right reason, as Hooker called it, must always be checked by the scripture, doing it the other way around would be silly; man's flawed mind is not divine.

Mr. Goswick. James. Jim. Ray. Our Founding Truth. OFT.

No offense, but I'm far more interested in what Richard Hooker said than what you say. He was a major influence on the Founding fathers, and you live in 2009. Sounds interesting.

Please quote Rev. Hooker directly, preferably with a citation where we can look up the original words in the original context for ourselves.

This would be courteous, scholarly, and honest. Anything below those standards is a waste of everyone's time including your own, eh?

Tom Van Dyke said...

And for the record, OFT, I did register a protest to management about the mindless attack on you above. Hopefully it'll be removed.

Jonathan Rowe said...

I may be able to remove it. Let's see. But OFT, off topic, if Raven did say that to your face, realize that "mere words" are not a legally sufficient defense against a battery charge.

AND, as a Christian, aren't you supposed to "turn the other cheek."

Jonathan Rowe said...

Note to other readers: OFT's "Only losers..." comment refers to a comment that was deleted for its content.

Our Founding Truth said...

And for the record, OFT, I did register a protest to management about the mindless attack on you above. Hopefully it'll be removed.>

It's not that big of a deal, only when people say things they have no way to back up, hiding behind a computer. That's high school stuff, it should never happen on here.

This blog is for debate, nothing else. Your absolutely right, I wouldn't have did a thing about it, but, there's still no place for it on here.

No offense, but I'm far more interested in what Richard Hooker said than what you say.>

Heck, I'm getting tired posting the same thing over and over on here. We should all know what right reason is.

Tom Van Dyke said...

Well, you're doing OK in this one, as evidenced by the absence of some of the usual suspects around here [and the sudden appearance of one]. Here's to keeping an even keel and not overstating the case.