As with most debates we have within the Church there is a good chance this issue has come up before. While looking for something else I came across this article by Greg Bahnsen from 1988 that is critiquing Norman Geisler concerning Dr. Geisler’s critiques of Theonomy. It should be noted at this time that not all critiques of the Escondido-led views on 2K come from theonomic circles (in fact most of them do not, Nelson Kloosterman who himself has come out against the reformulation of 2K had his run-ins in the past with Dr. Bahnsen). However in this short excerpt one of the core issues, Natural Law, what it says and what content it delivers, is examined by Dr. Bahnsen.
Is Natural Revelation Morally Abbreviated?
The only defense left to Dr. Geisler at this point is to resort to the baseless idea that a wedge can be driven between the just requirements revealed in the Bible and those revealed in natural revelation — that is, to hold that civil government should not be guided by the morality of the Bible, but instead by “God-given moral rules called Nature’s laws.” Distinguishing between the moral content of special revelation and the moral content of natural revelation (as though the latter is merely a parallel subsection of the former), Geisler maintains that “God ordained Divine Law for the church, but He gave Natural Law for civil government.”
Nothing like this dichotomy (and truncating of natural revelation’s moral content) can be found in the teaching of the Apostle Paul, however. The Apostle teaches that even pagans who do not have the advantage of the specially revealed law (“oracle”) of God (Romans 3:102) nevertheless know the just requirements of that law since they are inescapably revealed through the created order and human conscience (1:18-23; 2:14-15). They know the holiness and justice of the living and true God well enough that they are guilty for not worshiping Him aright in any area of their lives; thus God’s wrath is revealed from heaven “against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (1:18) — against all transgressions of His righteous law (cf. 7:7, 12).
Paul says nothing to suggest that there is a difference in the moral content of these two revelations, written and natural. The written law is an advantage over natural revelation because the latter is suppressed and distorted in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18-25). But what pagans suppress is precisely the “work of the Law” (2:14-15). Natural revelation communicates to them, as Paul says, “the ordinance of God” about “all unrighteousness” (1:29,32). Because they “know” God’s ordinance, they are “without excuse” for refusing to live in terms of it (1:20). What the law speaks, then, it speaks “in order that all the world may be brought under the judgment of God” (3:19). The is ONE law order to which all men are bound, whether they learn of it by means of natural revelation or by means of special revelation. God is no respecter of persons here (2:11). “All have sinned” (3:23) — thus violated that common standard for the “knowledge of sin” in all men, the law of God. (3:20).
The Primary Error
With Geisler’s theologically faulty view of natural revelation (or natural law) in mind, we can understand how his article commits its primary conceptual error: the attempt to enunciate a moral standard for civil government (contrary to secular humanism) but one which is Not religious (contrary to reconstructionism). He asks what kind of laws should be enacted by the State, “Christian laws or Humanistic laws?” He immediately answers: “Neither. Rather, they should simply be just laws. Laws should not be either Christian or anti-Christian; they should merely be fair ones.”
What is naively presupposed by that statement, though, is that we can establish a common conception and standard of “justice” (or “fairness”) apart from reference to a religions commitment — without gaining that moral standard from the philosophical worldview within which we work, whether it be atheistic, deistic, pantheistic, cult, Christian, or whatever. But this is nothing but an illusion — the illusion of religious neutrality in making moral decisions. Humanists and Christians do not agree as to what constitutes “justice”; neither do Hindus and naturalists, etc. These fundamental disagreements do not arise because advocates of one worldview or the other have made intellectual errors (of fact or logic) which are readily correctable. They disagree precisely because of the irreconcilable conflict in their fundamental religious (or philosophical) commitments.
Geisler is simply playing a game with words when he advocates a “just government” instead of a “religious government.” There is no religiously neutral concept of justice that could make sense out of this distinction. When men claim to be relying on natural reason (or even “natural law” gained from the world), they endorse grievous moral conclusions — such as Dr. Geisler’s early condoning of abortion under some circumstances! (Ethics: Alternatives and Issues, Zondervan, 1971, pp. 220-223). But even more important and relevant to Geisler’s hypothesis about political ethics, those who claim to be following natural reason or natural law still do not end up concurring with each other over the most elementary political issues — as the history of both philosophical opinion and political theorizing illustrates.
