Well, one more time, it's good to be here. We're coming in our study to some of the issues that are the crux of this problem that we face in our nation. There are many Christians that know we face a huge problem in our nation, but don't really know where to begin in trying to work through that problem, where to see a solution, and so on. So, of course, that's been my burden too, and I'm interested in providing answers. and say, look, here's the problem. Here's where the problem is. And that's the goal, then, of our study. I thought, as we begin tonight, I'd remind you the outline we followed so that you have in your thinking this framework conceptually and maybe can put tonight in the context of the other nights that we've had. First thing we did was survey Scripture's presentation on the implications of the church's obedience. When the church obeys, the Lord Jesus Christ is ready to avenge all the disobedience that's in the world when your obedience is fulfilled. And we saw it in Psalm 81, and I'm quoting the New Testament, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. They're mighty through God through the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thought that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. And so many times when it's quoted, they stop there. And having a readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. So in evaluating our world in terms of that aspect of Scripture's presentation on the implications of the church's obedience, I tried to place the blame where I believe it belongs clearly. The troubles that we have in our world in civil affairs rest upon the Christian church. God is more than willing to humble and subdue his enemies. And he promises to accomplish that when our obedience is fulfilled. And that's the hardest message perhaps, but that's the message that is liberating about this whole thing. This is not about us evaluating the numbers on the battlefield and how big the enemy is and how there's giants and we're like grasshoppers in their sight. The question is how, what is the requisite? What are the requirements for God to give us the victory? Our obedience. Just show me what to obey. Show me what to do. And that was the first presentation. Then I spent two meetings talking about the promises of the Father to the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. And how that in fact includes a promise of victory that is definitive for human history. We don't properly understand scripture until we see Jesus in the role of being victorious with his gospel. with his kingdom and rule in human history, and as one then who possesses all the promises of Scripture. Everything Scripture said and promised the Son belongs to Jesus. It's in his hand, and he is the one who, as our head, gives us the promises of God. In him are all the promises of God, yea, and amen to the glory of God. And then when you look more narrowly, that obedience of Jesus can be understood in terms of the law of God. And the law of God, if you contrast Jesus with Adam, the first father who sinned, and by whom sin passed upon all men, but we all sinned in Him. With Jesus, you see a full-orbit relationship of the fulfillment of the law of God that transcends his personal and comprehensive obedience. And his obedience was personal, it was comprehensive, but it's fulfilled upon a seed. And it has an historic consummate fulfillment in history when the implications of Christ's personal obedience will be seen in our world. And that's realized in eternity when the Scripture describes what heaven is like, it uses those terms, those descriptions that are taken from the law of God being fulfilled in order to describe that to us. And of course, that was Christ. Then we turn to the fall of man to examine more clearly what's wrapped up in the fall. And in doing that, I wanted to demonstrate the implications of all non-Christian thought. What are the implications of non-Christian thought? or more properly speaking, what are the principles of the system that Satan sold to our first parents? How does it work? What's the thinking behind it? What principles can we understand? And then we noted the various assumptions that underlie the temptation of our first father. In the first place, belief, or the idea that all authority is an evil thing. And the basic principles that undergird this idea of authority in society is that they're oppressing you. They're holding you down from your rightful position. Secondly, in ontology, or in being. Now I'm going to use three words again to describe this. Ontology, being, or metaphysics. And in ontology, the Christian position is basically that there is a creator and there is a creation and these two things in being are distinct. God exists. God in the beginning, God. And that he is separate and independent of his creation. He's not of the same stuff as creation. He's spoken to existence, the world. Now that's the Christian position. Satanic system says You can be as God's plural. It's not like just one. And the implication is that He's got to keep you from certain knowledge because if you get that knowledge, you'll get where He is. And so there's a reduction of God down to the scale of a creature. They're on the same level. The denial of is creator-creature distinction in ontology or in being or in metaphysics. So that distinction is being denied. God is immersed in reality in terms of an evolutionary process. And on this theory, whatever God is can no longer say what shall be. I mean, there are facts out there in the universe that are above God that he can't control. You eat that. He can't stop you from being God. like him, ascending on the scale of being. And he no longer controls history. He no longer controls reality. He is no longer the one to whom men must answer for their actions. He is immersed in the creation, the he that you met in the garden, Adam and Eve. He, it, whatever, is immersed in the creation and he's just like you. You do the right things, you can be like him on his level. And you be your own man. on that basis. Then in terms of knowledge, in epistemology or knowledge in the doctrine of how we know things, the assumption there is that human reason is autonomous. That human thought is on the same level as God's communication, is independent of God's communication. and doesn't need God's communication in order to arrive at truth. And that means that truth is above God and man, if you want to call it God, this conception that is in the satanic system. Truth is above God and man. God is subject to truth Just like man is subject to truth, and God can't stop you from finding things out. So wherever truth is found, man comes into contact with truth independent of God. And that is a major emphasis in satanic thinking. That is, man is univocal with God. They speak in the same voice. And so if man states truth, that's just like God stating truth, because truth is above God and man. It's out there and not dependent upon God for being truth. So man being univocal is independent and he's autonomous, and he doesn't need God to find truth or arrive at it. In law or ethics, man sees himself also as autonomous, and to an extent, he is creative. And of course, that process depends on where you're at in the autonomous thinking. But law or ethics doesn't flow from God in this thinking, who is the source of truth and obligation. But from the nature of things as they are, there is a right and a wrong. Now again, in the Christian system, truth flows from God. God is the source of truth. And God is the source of obligation. And so when God says, do this, that's an obligation for me. Now, His commandment bears other relationships. God is love. He doesn't tell people to do unloving things. And God is wise and providentially controls the outcomes in our world. And so when God says to do something, it's the right thing to do and it has all the good consequences of action. But it is right because it's from God. He is the source of obligation, of law, you see. And again, autonomous man frees himself from that thought and Law is there in the nature of things, and there's a right thing to do, and that's independent of God in His thinking. So man's going to look at his world and decide for himself what's the right thing to do. And what's right is in the nature of things the way they are. Now that's again a summary in these elements of the fallen or satanic thought. receive their development wherever man is engaged. You can take those principles and evaluate any field of endeavor. And if you understand fallen man as the autonomous man who is eliminating, create or create your distinction, who thinks thought is original with him, who is a law unto himself. Whatever it is that he does, he'll go into that area and apply those principles. And of course, it's a mess because those are the principles he's applying. So you want to evaluate your world, you can turn with that kind of an outline and find that receives development in a number of different fields. Okay, but it also receives development in questions of civil polity. It's no less the case that if we want to evaluate civil government, we can evaluate in terms of these principles, and that's what we are upon the project of doing at this point. So, the question is, how shall civil polity be constructed? Upon the fallen principles? that we can identify in Genesis 3, or upon Christian principles that come from the Word of God. Where Christians embrace and develop the fallen program, evil is the outcome. And I'm saying where all men, fallen men, are going to embrace the fallen principles. They can't help it. Those are their principles. They're sewn into them. But Christians also, at times, embrace fallen principles and are acting upon the fallen principles, and that explains the mess that we're in. You know, especially in the situation where Christ is on the throne and has given us the victory and says, I'll crush your enemies when you're obedient. Now, it's so much the more on me when I embrace and operate on fallen principles. So, Christians embrace and develop the fallen program, evils, the outcomes, society is plagued in despair and destruction as a result. And we have to be convinced then as Christians that we ought to have God's principles at the root in the things that we think and do when we come to the questions of civil polity. And we also ought to be convinced that there is no liberty without the Lord Jesus Christ. If the Son make you free, you'll be free indeed. And without that, there is no liberty. So when we go to our society, I mean that's just an easy principle as far as declaring what's right. We can't be ashamed of the gospel of Christ when we go to our society. We've got to say, Christ commands this. God commands this. This is the truth in Jesus Christ. I'm not ashamed of that. The reason is because if you deny that, you kill yourself. You're destroying your society. You're committing suicide as a society by rejecting the knowledge of Christ and the Word of God. That's simple. So, we ought to be convinced of that, and that's not what I'm interested in developing tonight. Last time we met, what I tried to do then was to develop the fallen system with respect to being. Okay? Ontology. Being. Metaphysics. Okay? Now, if I take that as a category, the anti-Christian position can erect civil government and ignore the fact that God is. So how does Satan's program work out? How does the program of reducing God to a creaturely level work itself out when we come to civil government? It works itself out simply by man saying, well, there is no God. He's not there, you know, and we can't expect to have anything good. We can't expect to solve our problems with reference to God. We are going to take questions of civil polity and organize our society on the basis of, well, the denial of God or the idea that God is not there. If God is there, civil government is the creation of God. If God is there, then God has ordained civil magistrates to be under Him over the people for His own glory and the public good. And He's harmed them. with the power of the sword, and he's given them a job to do, and so on and so forth. That kind of society, or that kind of a doctrine of God's presence, if he's there metaphysically, then civil governments are under his authority and required to do business with God about their powers and the things that they do and the way they organize themselves and so on. If God's not there, then government is the creation of man It is of the people, by the people, for the people. It is a government that comes from the emanation of man. That is, man gets together, he looks at his circumstances, he decides to have civil government of the people. By the people, and that is, the legitimacy of that government depends upon what people say about it and there's some methodology of legitimacy. and methodology of administration, and it's for the people, and that is the people get to design the ends of this institution. They get to say what the institution's going to do. Okay? Government of the people is of man's creation for man's purposes. By the people, men are the ones who sanction and administer it. And for the people, the people define the government's legitimate role. satanic to the core, that's the autonomous human principle, that's the social contract theory of civil government that came on the scene in our early colonial period and has dominated the world since. As America turned from God, the Church turned from God and embraced this fable about where government comes from, and they used it, then we have ontologically eliminated God from our thinking, and we are in the death throes of the social contract theory. Popularized in English history by John Locke, adopted on these shores as the operating theory of civil governments, it replaced the divine right of kings theory of the English monarchs, but it represents a secularizing of a covenantal theory of government that came out of the Protestant Reformation. If you read any good historian, you know, bankrupt 18th century Unitarian historian, says that John Calvin is the founder of America. So that's his first volume. We've got to understand, John Talbot is the founder of America. And what's he talking about? He's saying, look, the covenant theology of the Protestant Reformation is what came to these shores and is responsible for our institutions. And Daniel J. Alizar, the Jew of the 20th century, said the same thing in that business that I read from Alizar, where he says essentially the same thing. Protestant, Reformed, Presbyterian theology. He said Presbyterian, not me. And it was secularized in the social contract theory of Locke. Now that's our history. So that's last time, and I'm trying to just give you the overview. What we're going to do tonight then is turn our attention to epistemology, to the doctrine of knowledge. Where do we get our ideas from? Where do we get our knowledge from? And remember that in the fall, knowledge was viewed as accessible to us, independent of God. We don't have to go to His Word for knowledge. Knowledge is out there. It's above God, it's above man, and it's accessible to us, independent of God. Fallen man is in touch with knowledge that is not mediated by God. So knowledge is out there to be grasped. It's above God and man. The fallen program on knowledge is evident in the modern doctrine when we ask, where does law come from? Now, as I begin that, let me make a disclaimer here or try to describe something. I'll get to your question in a minute. I'll try to describe the relationship. These categories, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, they're helpful. But anytime you're working with them, you quickly find that they overlap. It's hard to keep pigeon-holed in one category, and that's what's going to happen tonight as we begin to talk about knowledge. The knowledge that illustrates so clearly this attempt to find, or the issue that illustrates so clearly this attempt to find knowledge apart from God is law. in our society. Where's law come from? And we're going to see how that works itself out. So you work with the categories, you find they overlap. If you did some apologetic work, and again developed in terms of Cornelius Van Til's apologetic, you'll see the way he critiques various problems ranges over the categories. Okay? For example, I'll give you the fun example that I had one time. I was on a plane with a girl. I was on a plane and I'm sitting next to this girl. So I strike up a conversation. Where are you from? What do you do for a living? This kind of thing. So she is the administrator of some kind of a relief organization. She's very concerned with the problems of poverty in third world countries and she's administering some kind of relief or aid to these children, starving children in these countries. So we talked about this, and I answered a lot of questions about it. And then I said to her, I said, oh, I said, well, you must be a Christian. And she says, oh, no, no, I'm not a Christian. I said, oh, you're not a Christian? What are you? And she said, well, it's hard for me to know, you know, but I'm studying under this particular I forget what she called him, Buddhist monk, basically. And she was very interested in Buddhism. And we spent a little time, I said, well, you know, I'm a Christian pastor now, you know, and now how do you reconcile those two things? And she said, well, what do you mean? I said, well, you know, I mean, in Buddhism, you know, the flesh, the body is the problem of us all. And we need to get in touch with the universals that are out there in the universal mind. If it's Zen, you're seeking to achieve thusness, quote unquote, with the universal mind. And I said, the sufferings of the body? That's meaningless. I said, I mean, why would you worry about the sufferings of children and their bodies If you're a Buddhist, and she said, I don't want to talk anymore about this, you know, and she cut off the conversation. Now, now you understand the problem that we're dealing with. See, we're ranging over categories in this conversation. You know, I asked her what she does. Here's her ethics. And her ethics are, I'm interested in feeding hungry children and stopping them from suffering. I ask her about her metaphysics, and it's a four-matter dichotomy, sort of like Greek thought, only it's Buddhism. How do you put the denial of God as a creator together with concern over starving children or suffering children? If there is no God, and if the reality is Buddhism metaphysically, then this is meaningless, and your work is meaningless. You can't make your work make sense to me on the basis of what you told me. And of course, I was illustrating that to her as a means of witnessing to her, but you see, the point is, when you begin to critique people and their thinking, the categories are helpful and they range from one to another. If you make a metaphysical claim here that there is no God, that has implications for ethics and for knowledge. If you say that there is no God, then what is law? If you say that there is no God, you know, and of course, and again, let me give you one more illustration to try to bring this together in your thinking. So, the agnostic comes, and he says, if there is a God, like you Christians say that there is, how could he let some innocent little child be raped by some monster? You know, and all the suffering that goes into that. That's horrible. How can a good God that you say you believe in let bad things like that happen to little innocent children? I want to know as an atheist. And the answer is, well, okay, you're an atheist. So before I answer the question, just tell me one thing. what you're really saying is that there is no God like those Christians say. Is that right? Yes, that's right. There can't be a God, and it can't be good if those things happen, those bad things happen. And the answer is, well, before we begin to say theologically from the Scripture how God reveals Himself as relating to problems like that, We ought to realize one simple thing. You're talking about good and bad. Good and bad. The idea of bad is meaningless in the system that you say you believe in. So you're running around saying that there is no God. If there is no God metaphysically, then there are no ethics here and we can't speak about raping a child as being bad. Your system does not allow for that. You see? You're speaking, Mr. Atheist, in a meaningless way. You're borrowing Christianity in order to argue against the God of Christianity when in your system there's nothing wrong with that. What is that? You tell me who you are. Are you B.F. Skinner? If you're Mr. B.F. Skinner, then we have to get beyond freedom and dignity. We have to get on the level of where we recognize that we all only do what's already in the genes to do. And these are chemical reactions that are taking place in all of human thinking, all of human speech, all of human action. is explained by chemical reactions that were all a part of the evolutionary chance from which we come. And when you people talk about freedom for an individual, it's meaningless. When you talk about dignity for an individual, it's meaningless. And so if you're Mr. B.F. Skinner, the rape of that child is just already all there already. And that big bang back here, that happened. So if that's what you believe, then there's nothing wrong with this. And incidentally, Mr. Skinner, why do you bother writing books? If that's what it is, your books are meaningless too. Why do you bother writing books? Now, I'm illustrating in various ways. the apologetic task that flows from an understanding of the problems of the fall. We're going to compare, range across these categories, make a metaphysical denial here, you've got to realize there are implicitly ethical denials here, and problems of knowledge that enter into the question, and we're going to press those things if we're dealing with men. So quickly, if you work with the categories, you see they blend category to category, and you deny that there is a God, you're involving questions of knowledge, questions of ethics, and so on and so forth. So ethical terms like good and bad are meaningless, and part of our job is to point all this out. So when I speak of the source of law now, ethics, As a problem of epistemology, I'm not speaking nonsense. Are you with me on that idea? Because I'm going to talk about knowledge, where we get law from, and law is the thing that we're going to have the knowledge of. I'm not speaking nonsense. It's just the same kind of thing I just described to you. You can't take one category and not involve the others, okay? Alright, let's talk about Scripture and let's talk about knowledge for a minute from Scripture. The Christian Scriptures teach us about the inwardness or inner consciousness of man. Let's take Romans 1 and 2, for example, and there are implications of this for true Christian theology. We'll take up a critique of what men say about it in a minute, but you've got to recognize the things that Paul says here are important for the questions of knowledge. Okay. Paul in Romans 1 and verse 19. says, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Because of that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Wherefore, God also gave them up. to uncleanness through the lust of their own hearts. And I'll stop there. In Romans 2, so Paul presses this thing, he says, if you look at the Gentile world, that's how bad they are. What's the matter with the Gentile world? The Gentiles know God, and they glorify him not as God. Their vain and their imagination, their hearts are dark, they think they're wise, they're They're creature worshippers who God gives over to vile affections. An example he uses is homosexuality. That is the outworking of the denial of God when God gets fed up with it and gives them over to the horrible implications of their God-denying ideas. But the problem is they know God at heart and they deny Him. Now, in Romans 2, he turns to the religious, the Jew, or the man who has the revelation of God, and he says to the man who has the revelation of God, the implications of that are that you're guilty. He doesn't say the implications of that. Look at how bad the Gentiles are. Look at all the things they do. Look at how God brings them into judgment for all of their sins. And he says to the Christian church, the implications of that are you're guilty. It's not a source of pride, in other words. The implications are you're guilty because you then look at them And condemn that in them have the same root in you. You who condemn, you do the same things. Again, that's how it does it. Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judges. For wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself, for thou that judgest doest the same things. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth. against them which commit such things. And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasures up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds, to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life. But unto them that are contentious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation, and wrath, Tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first and also of the Gentiles. The glory, honor, and peace to every man that worketh good to the Jew first and also to the Gentile, for there is no respect of persons with God. For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law. And as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law. For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For 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, which show 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 in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel." Now you see the implications of the epistemology, the knowledge that was there in Romans 1 come out in Romans 2 again when Paul says, look, the Gentiles, even the Gentiles, have God's law written on their heart, they know the truth, and that will serve in the judgment. So, what happens? When you look at the Gentiles, the lesson is, don't condemn them, don't think that you're better than them. Let that serve as an example of the full development of the sins you're guilty of. When you look at them and say, look, except for the grace of God is me, Where am I guilty of these same things? Help me, Lord, to see. Help me to repent and let me not be prideful as a sinner, judging the ungodly for their ungodly deeds. That's Paul's use in Romans 1 and 2 of this issue. So what do you notice? You notice that the Gentiles, the unbelievers, all men everywhere, have a knowledge of God. And they have a knowledge of his law. It's written on their hearts. Now that was the situation with Adam at creation. Adam had the law. as a covenant of works written on his heart. He knew what was right and wrong. I did forget your question. Go ahead. Okay. Okay. Sure. Absolutely. Right, but that's not necessarily, we know that, but it's not necessarily what we're going to press with them unless we're approaching it in a different way. I like what Van Til said, this is a quote from him on epistemology. The possibility of human predication presupposes the truth of the Christian faith. And that's his concept of knowledge. In other words, what he is saying is, in order to predicate, in order to say anything about something. Christianity and its teachings have to be true about God and the universe and the nature of knowledge. And when you take the unbeliever who denies God, if that was true, he could not speak. And that's a philosophical demonstration in presuppositional apologetics. In other words, you say to the unbeliever, well, you're making these statements. Where does knowledge come from? How do you know? How do you judge? And how do you evaluate? And you're working through that to the conclusion. Now, Van Til also pointed out that in terms of these philosophies, the God-denying philosophies that are out there, they always end in skepticism. They always end with an individual school of philosophy coming to the point of saying, well, we know that we can't know anything. So they start denying it by denying God. They raise up a system of philosophy that seems to be coherent and consistent. The next guy comes along and asks a dumb question that they can't answer, and then they modify it some. And somebody else comes up and asks a question they can't answer, and they modify it some more, and then somebody with some insight comes, and the whole thing collapses, and in the end, that school of philosophy ends in skepticism. They can't know anything. That's the history of philosophy in the God-denying spheres of activity. So, yes, in order for someone to speak and to say God must be and he must be what he says he is or else you can demonstrate and we seek to demonstrate that anything he says then is meaningless if that's not the case. But for the question of knowledge here, biblically speaking, what we can say is that all men know that there is a God and are under the judgment of God because they suppress that knowledge of God. They know God, they don't like that, and they're suppressing it. And all men have some understanding of the law of God on a level that will allow God to bring judgment against them for the things that they can say, that was wrong. You know, I did that, that was wrong. So they have a knowledge of God and they have a knowledge of God's law. And again, in both cases, they suppress that knowledge, but it's there and it'll be used by God in judgment in the end. That's the teaching of Scripture. And let me go, let me read what I had in my outline, make sure I got everything. Paul teaches us that the natural man knows God. He suppresses that knowledge in unrighteousness. He would rather worship and serve the creature. And for that reason, he's under the judgment of God who gives him over. The law of God is written on his heart, and he's never without that testimony, even in his apostasy. Okay, now that's important to understand. No matter what the man who is suppressing the knowledge of God says, he still knows inside. that he is a creature of God under the judgment of God. He can say that there is no God, we've proven this clearly, there can be no God. He still knows he's under the judgment of God. And we know that about him from the Scripture, regardless of whether he'll admit it or not. That's important. We're not saying he's going to admit he knows God. We're not saying he's going to admit the law of God is right. What we are saying is inside he knows it, whether he'll admit it or not, whether he'll say it or not. He knows it's there. It's inside of him. And of course, then he tries to sear the conscience on a level that never comes up in his thinking and it never bothers him. And part of the job we have to do in dealing with him is to pluck that chord of conscience in there and say, boom, you remember that one? Boom! Remember that? Let's make it vibrate a little bit. Let's make it sound. Let's bring this to the consciousness of man. Alright, I'll quote the Westminster Confession of Faith on this. The light of nature showeth that there is a God. Okay, that's the Confession of Faith in 21.1, or 1.1, the light of nature and the works of creation and providence. Remember what Paul said? The visible things of him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even as eternal power God. The light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God so as to leave men inexcusable. That's there. But there's no reformation in any of that knowledge. You can't be saved by the light of nature. There is no communication of Jesus Christ as the Son of God or the way to be reconciled. All it is, is I know God and I know I'm under judgment and I'm trying to suppress that knowledge in unrighteousness. It's the Word of God alone that is able to save and reform man by the power of God. And the law of God in Scripture is the only adequate testimony of morality. And the revelation of God about His Son is the only adequate revelation about the saving work of God. And so, If you're in this position of being the unbeliever or under the judgment of God, you can read the word of God as a condemnation to you or the knowledge of God as a condemnation, but you can't read it as salvation. You're not going to be saved by that. So it works in one direction. It works in the direction of condemnation. It does not work in the direction of salvation. Now, that has implications for legal theory, the things that we've talked about, and particularly that aspect of what use is this knowledge. And just to give you the end from the beginning here, or as we begin to get into this, the bottom line is, if you want to know what is the satanic manifestation on a program of epistemology for civil government, it is natural law. Natural law. Okay. That is law that is reasoned by man, apart from the revelation of God. Okay. Man is reasoning and he's saying, well, you know, this is obvious. I mean, this is obviously a law because, and he'll give you ten reasons why, it's obviously a law. You know, set man down. I have an acquaintance, a friend maybe, who sent me this paper by a conservative on why homosexuality is bad. Okay. And it was this kind of a program. Purely a rationalistic exclamation. He didn't want to say, apparently, because God says it's bad, you know. and try to reason about what God says about homosexuality and how it's bad. He began with this scheme of things where, well, the bottom line is, well, they can't reproduce. And so homosexuality is bad because they can't reproduce. Okay? And that's his theme as to why homosexuality is bad. Now, he's reasoning ethically. But he's got a doctrine of knowledge. How does he know homosexuality is bad? When we ask that as a question, what he says is, what's his answer? His answer comes out of his own brain, and he's going to say, I've got a scheme of things. This is why it's bad. Now we all know it's bad. We all don't like it. Let me tell you why it's bad. And the answer to why it's bad comes out of his own mind. That's the problem we face of epistemology in the satanic program. This is satanic to the core. He's arguing against homosexuality. I'm against homosexuality too. But the way he argues is satanic to the core. Why is it? Because it comes out of his own brain. It's not based upon God revealing why homosexuality is wrong and a reasoning that takes place from the word of God. And of course, I'm pointing that out to the friend that sent me the article and saying, look, this is bad. This is horrible. You know, this is no good. That's the thing we face. So one question we can ask is, well, Does what the scripture says about the knowledge of God and the law of God written on the heart of every man justify a process of seeking law in the reason of man, in human reason? Does what scripture says about, again, man knowing God and about the law written on their heart, does that validate a program of seeking law in the consciousness of man, in the mind of man? Well, the answer is, I'm going to say no, and let me first give you a little history of this problem. This is natural law from a Wikipedia article. And every once in a while, when I go on Wikipedia, I love the article. It's got everything that I wanted. So I'm going to do a little reading here on natural law and give you a history from Wikipedia, but it's good, helpful. Natural law, or the law of nature, is a system of law which is purportedly determined by nature and thus universal. Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature, both social and personal, and deduce binding rules of moral behavior. Natural law is contrasted with the positive law, meaning man-made law, not good law. of a given political community, society, or nation-state, and thus serves as a standard by which to critique positive law. In other words, natural law, again, is it hard to tie down? Okay. The use of reason to analyze human nature, social and personal, to deduce, it's a deduction of binding rules And this deduction of binding rules that we get from nature, the nature of things out of our minds, can be used to judge political institutions and political laws. According to natural law theory, which holds that morality is a function of human nature and reason can discover valid moral principles by looking at the nature of humanity in society. The content of positive law cannot be known without some reference to natural law or something like it. Viewed this way, natural law can be invoked to criticize decisions about the statutes but less to criticize the law itself. Some use of natural law synonymously with natural justice or natural light, although natural law is often conflated with the common law, The two are distinct in that the natural law is a view that certain rights or values are inherent or universally cognizable by virtue of human reason. Now you've got some self-evident aspects of this thing. Certain things, certain values are inherent and universally may be understood by virtue of human reason or human nature. While common law is the legal tradition whereby certain rights or values are legally cognizable by virtue of judicial recognition or articulation. So you've got natural law, it's a thing in itself. It's there and we can understand it. Whereas judicial law is our statement of the principles of natural law, but we've recognized it and we've set them down. Natural law theories have, however, exercised a profound influence on the development of the English common law, and have featured greatly in the philosophies of, you know these guys, Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Suarez, Richard Hooker, Thomas Hobbes, Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Puffendorf, John Locke, Francis Hutchinson, John Jacques Berloux-McCoy, and Emmerich D. Vettel. Because of the intersection between natural law and natural rights, it has been cited as a component in the United States Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, as well as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Declarationism states that the founding of the United States is based on natural law. Okay, here's history. The use of natural law in its various incarnations, and there, I'll stop there, you're going to realize very quickly that once you say, okay, yeah, that's the case, I mean, it's there, it's not duplicatable. It has various incarnations. In other words, when Plato and his boys reason what natural law is, it's going to be one thing, and when somebody else does, it'll be the total opposite thing, and both of them use the same process and arrive at opposite conclusions. So it has various incarnations. Use of natural law and its various incarnations has varied widely through its history. There are a number of different theories of natural law differing from each other with respect to the role that morality plays in determining the authority of legal norms. This article deals with its usages separately rather than an attempt to unify them into a single theory. And he deals with Plato and Aristotle as sources of this thing, the Stoic natural law and Cicero. natural law. All right, this is important. Paul of Parsis wrote in his epistle to the Romans, for when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do the things contained in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law unto themselves, their conscience also bearing witness. The intellectual historian A.J. Carlyle has commented on this passage as follows. There could be no doubt that St. Paul's words imply some conception analogous to the natural law in Cicero, a law written in men's hearts, recognized by man's reason, a law distinct from the positive law of any state or from what St. Paul recognized as the revealed law of God. It is in this sense that St. Paul's words are taken by the fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries, like St. Hilary of Portiers, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine. And there seems no reason to doubt the correctness of their interpretation. Some early church fathers, especially those, and now I'm leaving the Carlisle quote, some early church fathers, especially those in the West, sought to incorporate natural law into Christianity. Most notable among these was Augustine of Hippo, who equated natural law with man's prelapsarian state. As such, a life according to nature was no longer possible, and men needed instead to seek salvation through the divine law and grace of Jesus Christ. Yes, we can affirm that is true. Did man, without the fall, have the knowledge of God's law written on his heart? Yes. And was he able to act in terms of that without antithesis with God and suppressing the truth and unrighteousness? Yes. That's okay. In the 12th century, Gratian equated the natural law with the divine law. A century later, St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica 1.2 quotes at 90 to 106, restored natural law to its independent state, asserting that natural law as the rational creature's participation in the eternal law. Yet since human reason could not fully comprehend the eternal law, it needed to be supplemented by the revealed divine law. Meanwhile, Aquinas thought that all human or positive laws were to be judged by their conformity to the natural law. An unjust law is not a law in the full sense of the word. It retains merely the appearance of law insofar as it is duly constituted and enforced in the same way a just law is, but it is itself a perversion of the law. At this point, the natural law was not only used to pass judgment on the moral worth of various laws, but also to determine what the law said in the first place. The principle laid the seed for the possible societal tension with reference to tyrants. An understatement. The natural law was inherently teleological and deontological. Okay. Okay. It was inherently, it had its goal and it was a goal without God in point of reference. In that, although it aimed at goodness, it is entirely focused on the ethicalness of actions rather than the consequence. The specific content of the natural law was therefore determined by a conception of what things constituted happiness, be they temporal satisfaction or salvation. The state, in being bound by the natural law, was conceived as an institution directed at bringing its subjects to true happiness. In the 16th century, the school of Salamanca, that's Suarez and de Vitoria, further developed a philosophy of natural law. After the Church of England broke from Rome, the English theologian Richard Hooker adapted Thomistic notions of natural law to Anglicanism. There are five important principles to live, learn, reproduce, worship God, and live in an ordered society. This is all human reason. All right, now a section on English jurisprudence. Heinrich Rahman has observed, the tenacity with which the spirit of the English common law retained the conceptions of natural law and equality which it had assimilated during the Catholic Middle Ages. Thanks especially to the influence of Henry D. Brackton and Sir John Fortescue, Brackton's translator notes that Brackton was a trained jurist with the principles and distinctions of Roman jurisprudence firmly in mind, but Brackton adapted such principles to English purposes rather than copying slavishly. In particular, Brackton turned the imperial Roman maxim that the will of the prince is law on its head, insisting that the king is under law. The legal historian Charles F. Mullet had noted Bracken's ethical definition of law, his recognition of justice, and finally his devotion to quote unquote natural rights. Bracken considered justice to be the fountainhead from which all rights arise. Justice, the fountainhead of rights. For his definition of justice, Bracton quoted the 12th century Italian jurist, Ezo, justice is the constant and unfailing will to give to each his right. Bracton's work was the second legal treaty studied by the young apprentice lawyer, Thomas Jefferson. Sir John Fortescue stressed the supreme importance of the law of God and of nature in works that profoundly influenced the course of legal development in the following centuries. The legal scholar Ellis Sandoz has noted that the historically ancient and ontologically higher law, eternal, divine, natural, are woven together to comprise a single harmonious texture in Fortescue's account of English law. As the legal historian Norman Doe explains, Fortescue follows the general pattern set by Aquinas. The objective of every legislator is to dispose people to virtue. It is by means of law that this is accomplished. Fortescue's definition of law, also found in two others after all, was a sacred sanction commanding what is virtuous and forbidding the contrary. I'm going to skip ahead to Edward Koch, a prominent jurist of his time. Koch's preeminence extended across the ocean. For the American revolutionary leaders, law meant Sir Edward Koch's custom and right reason. Koch defined law as perfect reason, which commands those things that are proper and necessary, and which prohibits contrary things. For Koch, human nature determined the purpose of law, and law was superior to any one man's reason or will. And aside on Koch, Koch came in confrontation. He's contemporary with James First. As an English jurist, he is contemporary with King James 1603 to 1626-28, somewhere in there, before Charles I. And of course, what's James's political philosophy we talked about last time? The divine right of kings. And Coke was, as an English jurist, trying to curb the divine right of kings. Well, he didn't argue that divine right of kings was wrong, but what he said was, yes, but you're not the only king that there's ever been. And you have a divine right, James, just like the other kings had divine right. Your decrees can't contradict their decrees. Or else you're not acting in terms of the true divine right. And it's on that level that we can judge King James' actions. And so the judging of the king's actions became the product or the work of Coke as a jurist, or Cook, however you want to say the name, as a jurist. And yet you understand that what is transcendent in Cook then? History. Your decree has to agree with his decree, has to agree with legal precedent. As early as the 19th century, it was held that the law of nature is the ground of all laws. And by the Chancellor and Judges, it is required by the law of nature that every person, before he can be punished, ought to be present, and if absent by contumacy, he ought to be summoned and made and make default. Further, in 1824, we find it held that proceedings in our courts are founded upon the law of England and that the law is again founded upon the law of nature and the revealed law of God. If the right sought to be enforced is inconsistent with either of these, the English municipal courts cannot recognize it. You have in this a rough outline of natural law and natural law theory. Let me read you Blackstone now. The English jurist William Blackstone was read in our colonies and he was accepted in the colonies as the brilliant writer and commentator on English law. But listen to what Blackstone says. Law in its most general and comprehensive sense signifies a rule of action and is applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action, whether animate or inanimate, rational or irrational. Thus we say that the laws of motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics. Thus when the Supreme Being formed the universe and created matter out of nothing, he impressed certain principles upon that matter from which it can never depart. and without which it would cease to be. When he put that matter into motion, he established certain laws of motion. If we farther advance from mere inactive matter to vegetative and animal-like, we shall find them still governed by laws. This, then, is the general signification of law, a rule of action dictated by some superior being. Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his creator, for he is entirely a dependent being. And consequently, as man depends absolutely upon his maker for everything, it is necessary that he should, in all points, conform to his maker's will. This will of his maker is called the law of nature. For as God, when he created matter and endued it with the principle of mobility, established certain rules for the perpetual direction of motion, so when he created man and endued him with free will to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature. whereby that free will is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws. This law of nature, being coeval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this, and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority immediately or immediately from this original. But in order to apply this to the particular exigencies of each individual, it is still necessary to have recourse to reason, whose office is to discover as it was before observed, what the law of nature directs in every circumstance of life. And if our reason were always as in our first ancestor, before his transgression, clear and perfect, unruffled by passions, unclouded by prejudice, unimpaired by disease or intemperance, the task would be pleasant and easy. We should need no other guide but this. But every man now finds the contrary in his own experience, that his reason is corrupt and his understanding full of ignorance and error. This has given manifold occasion for the benign interposition of divine providence, which in compassion to the frailty, the imperfection, and blindness of human reason has been pleased at sundry times and in diverse manners to discover and enforce its laws by an immediate and direct revelation. The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures. These precepts, when revealed, are found upon comparison to be really a part of the original law of nature. as they tend in all their consequences to man's felicity. But we are not from thence to conclude that the knowledge of these truths was attainable by reason in its present corrupt state." Okay? Now, despite the language of all this in Blackstone, he ends on a solid evaluation of the problem. And if we go back to Romans 1 and Romans 2, the basic problem is, no matter whether or not the law of God was written on man's heart, no matter whether or not the knowledge of God was written in man, man, the sinner, suppresses it in unrighteousness. And so we can't look to fallen man for the testimony about God existing or truth about law. We can't look to him. We can't search for it inside of him. We have to go to what is written, the Word of God for the law and for our knowledge of the law. And that's the clear situation. that emerges when you think through it. But what we have in our world is natural law theory of what's right. And they'll talk about right, if you read Locke, you know, Locke talked about the law of nature. We talked about the social contract last week. Locke talked about the law of nature. And he says, and reason, which is that law, teaches. And what's he saying? He's saying, well, look, I look for, you know, Let's not be Bible thumpers, man. Let's not be Bible thumpers. Let's put that away. Let's go to the world on the basis of what we can agree. And let's say to the world, look, it's right reason teaches us that we shouldn't kill. Right reason teaches us that homosexuality is bad. Why? Because we can't reproduce. or some such thing like that. In other words, the approach that these Christian thinkers historically now have made to fallen man has been to condescend to his suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and continue to speak to him as if, well, it's in there and we're going to draw it out. OK. And that's the wrong approach. But that's historically been the approach. Blackstone has said all these great things about, look, if we can talk about the law of nature and we know that it is, and here's what it is, it's the precepts of the divine law, but we've got to go to Scripture because Scripture is more authoritative because we are full of frailty and imperfection, blindness, and so on. We've got to go to Scripture for it. If you go on in Blackstone, do you think that's what he did? Now, he's got it in theory, but he didn't make it stick when he came to stating the laws of England. It was, again, the rationalistic approach. So where do we get law from is the issue in epistemology. And the manifestation of a satanic epistemology says, And again, understand this, okay, laws is natural, it's in the nature of things. I mean, there's right and there's wrong and it's out there. Where are we going to look for it? Human reason. Knowledge apart from God and the Word of God is what man is seeking. Law apart from God and the Word of God is what man is seeking. And virtually And you can stop and critique now Christian political action on every front. And say, okay, what's their source of authority? Where are they getting their ideas? They're saying, and what do the Christians say? Well, we're for family values. What's that? Tradition. Well, I mean, traditions, because this is traditional. Not the word of God. They're not saying God's word, God's law defines what's right and wrong and good and how a society should operate. They're saying family values, right reason, law of nature, natural law. They're giving all of these things because they don't want to be Bible pumpers. They don't want to say, well, God says this and this is what's right. And again, the problem we face in our world is that's how the church is arguing their position. And when they do that, if you adopt family values and say, well, now we're for family values, okay? And they say, well, where do family values come from? Well, this is the way we've always done it, you know. And you reduce that down to tradition. Well, you know, Sodom has a long tradition. It was really early, Sodom and Gomorrah. I mean, there's been homosexuality in perverse pagan societies from really early in the book of Genesis. So they have as long-standing a tradition as we do. And once you say, well, tradition's the standard, now you put two traditions side by side, which one you choose is mere arbitrary. You see? It's impotent. These are impotent arguments that the church is using. And again, if you take this and try to dissect it, it's based on a false understanding of Romans 1 and 2. Romans 1 and 2 never says, look for the law in fallen man. It says, the knowledge of God and the law of God is there. And when God so chooses to judge men, then we'll know. Because they'll have an internal testimony. And so we can never use this suppressed knowledge in a positive way to create right laws for society. You're never going to use the sinner's suppressed knowledge of law or God to create something in society. So there's no sense in trying to bring it out of him in order to mold the society. What you do is you take the Word of God to the society, and you say, Thus saith the Lord, this is what's right, and when you declare it, and when you win, inside, no matter what he says, he knows there's a testimony inside of him that, you know, it is right. That that is right. You're plucking that cord that he is suppressing. You're not trying to bring out of him the direction for society. Okay? So, natural law theory, you know, well, I mean, there's a There's a testimony of right inside of man, but we're not looking in fallen man who suppresses the truth and unrighteousness to find what's right. We're looking at the Word of God. We ought to be looking at the Word of God to find what's right, declaring that to the society. And when we do that and we explain it... Now let's stop. If I go to the Word of God, does that mean I don't use human reason? No, I'm going to use human reason. There's an aspect of fallibleness that comes in. But my reasoning process is going to be governed by the Word of God. In the way I like to describe it, look, I'm reasoning from the Word of God to conclusions that are supported by the Word of God. So I start with the Word of God and I let that form my thinking. And then I think I got the right principle. I think I've analyzed this, the right principle here. Now let me go over and apply it over here. Now when I do that, is the conclusion I come up with in this area of application supported then by the Word of God somewhere else? And if that is the case, I think I got the right reasoned application of God's Word when I take it over to this new area. And if on the other hand, I pull out, like, so again, I, you know, this illustration, I use the guy reasoning why homosexuality is wrong. He didn't start with scripture or anything else, but let's, so I'm saying, look, it's all phony, what you're doing. Let me turn to Leviticus 20 for a minute. I'll show you how I'm illustrating the fact that his principle is false. from Leviticus 20. Let me make sure I'm in the right place. Yeah, let's see. I want to go back to... Yeah, the whole chapter, right? Well, Moloch, I want to come down. Familiar spirits now. Nine. Person, father or mother. Ten. The man that committed adultery with another man's wife, even he that committed adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. The man that lieth with his father's wife, hath uncovered his father's nakedness, both of them shall surely be put to death. their blood shall be upon them. If a man lie with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death. They have wrought confusion, their blood shall be upon them. If a man also lie with mankind, as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination, they shall surely be put to death, their blood shall be upon them. And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness, and they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they, that there be no wickedness among you. And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death and ye shall slay the beast. And if a woman approach unto a beast, you know, et cetera, et cetera. When you take the, first of all, homosexuality is a capital crime in God's sight. So the punishment, the sanction for homosexuality is death. Like it is with bestiality. Death is the proper sanction in God's sight for homosexuality, for bestiality, but also for adultery. Okay? And in several of these cases, the possibility of procreation does exist, and yet they are capital crimes in context with homosexuality and bestiality. So, okay, you can't reproduce in homosexuality. You can't reproduce in bestiality. So be it, but you can lie with your son's wife and have children, but you're both to be put to death in that case. And you can, you know, deal with near relations in the same way and so on and so forth. So when we take this thing, the argument of God here, and stop and look, first of all, there's no support. for a test of the ability to reproduce has to reason the argument on which this thing is prohibited. The argument is, it's an abomination. The argument is, I hate it! The first argument is, it is contrary to the will of God. And that is the standard for establishing what law is, not some system of reason that comes from autonomous man. Okay? So you see what I'm trying to illustrate here is just look, you know, we don't turn off reason. We don't say, well, look, we're never going to think again. We're just going to do, you know. No, this is brilliant. I mean, we have to think about this and discern principles and figure ways that we can apply this in our world. We begin with God's revelation, and we reason from that revelation to say, OK, now why is that? Let me try to understand why this is. And then we'll have wisdom to go out and apply it in other areas. That's the program. of epistemology as it relates to law. It's the program of how we are to use the law of God in terms of reason. It's not autonomous reason. So I'm not seeking moral consciousness in man from which to draw principles of law and elevate them and say, you know, it's the natural law. It's what's right. It's beautiful. all drawn out of the mind of man. I'm not seeking law in the mind of man. That's a satanic approach to law. It's from the garden. I'm seeking the law from God's Word, and I'm reasoning with it. I'm seeking to understand, why does He say that? Why is there death for bestiality and homosexuality and adultery? What do they have in common? You know, I might ask that question. I'm working with this, reasoning from it, so that I come to understand what the law is. Okay. Now, and so that's the problem of man's approach. And you can see clearly it is tied to medieval Roman Catholicism, to Aquinas, particularly if you set Augustine over and against Aquinas, Augustine, at least in the quote, seems to be well balanced. I haven't studied his view of law entirely, but he's right in the things that are quoted in the article. Aquinas, you know, you can see the perversion, and you see that approach in the Middle Ages, how it gained its ascendance, how it did in our colonial period as well. Men are running around talking about natural law, our Declaration of Independence says we hold these truths to be self-evident. that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and then they enumerate the rights as self-evident truths. Now, I do believe that there is self-evident truth. But the standard, the place that I find it, is not by an appeal to the mind of man to say, look, here's what I come up with. Don't you agree? The place that I find it is by an appeal to the Word of God. So if I was writing a Declaration of Independence, unlike Jefferson, I would be saying, man has a right to life, thou shalt not kill. You see? Man has a right to liberty and the enjoyment of those things that God has given him. You are bought with a price, be not the servants of men. And man has a right to property, thou shalt not steal. So I'd be grounding my rights and my conception of rights, if I'm writing this thing, on the Word of God, not on human reason. That's the error and the problem that we face in the church. And now, let me just take it to one other level, because what you'll see is On the source of law, if law is natural, or if law is divine, it can be spoken of as higher law. And that's another phrase that you'll get in Autonomous Man's Reasoning, higher law, higher law. And when we listen to various men that are involved in these reform movements of our day, You have to be very careful. I just tell you, they're not talking your language. Take it from me. They're not talking your language. OK, if you believe in God's law as the standard by which men are judged and what ought to be enforced in society and somebody else comes along. What was that one? You had Santorum talking about higher law, I forget whether he used the language of higher law exactly, but he said something to the effect that, look, there is a law that is higher than what man says. And he didn't define what that was, he just said there is a law higher than what man says. That we are bound to, and all the Christians are sitting there thinking, Yeah, yeah, it's God's law. That's not what he's talking about. There's a concept of higher law that circulates in our society. Not natural law is seen as higher law. So that the dictates of human reason, when it's operating upon eternal principles and the nature of the thing and so on, is the higher law in their conception. And as the alternate to that, when such dictates are decreed to be so by the court, so the court creates higher law. And as an alternate to that, I read one book. I can't think of the guy's name, but he's a constitutional scholar One of the big universities, I'm not sure whether it's Harvard or not, and he writes a book in the early 20th century on the whole history of higher law. The book's called The Higher Law Background of American Constitutionalism. And I thought, this is going to be a good study. That's something I'm interested in. The Higher Law Background of American Constitutionalism. And so what does he write in the book? He gives you this anthology of societies in which there was a concept of higher law. And he takes you down through it. So the fact that American society and American constitutionalism has a concept that there is such a thing as a higher law, that fact really is Standing in a long historical tradition that goes all the way back to Greece and Rome and maybe some old other societies and so on. Long standing tradition of an understanding that there is a higher law that is above the mere laws of society. Now how does it become a higher law? It becomes a higher law when the society in constitutional deliberation votes it to be the higher law. So the Constitution is the higher law of American society. Purely eminent, purely coming from man, flowing out of the mind of man, and here it becomes higher law when it's procedurally established as higher law. If we voted for that, well then it becomes a higher law. We can think, well, we're standing in a long tradition of higher law. And these reform movements that you'll get, and I haven't critiqued Mark Levin's book, Liberty and Tyranny, yet. I will, and I imagine it's going to be this kind of a thing. I know that the black guy that ran for president. Yeah, yeah. He ran for senator in Chicago. Alan Keyes. Alan Keyes talks this language of higher law. He's a Roman Catholic. And again, when he talks about the higher law or natural law and so on. He tried to build this theory of liberty on right reason, on natural law, on things the way they are. And again, men, this is common ground with unbelief. This is an attempt to move the unbeliever to our position without saying, thus saith the Lord. And Christ is not pleased with it. Thus saith the Lord is the only thing that will bring down the walls of paganism. Okay, now we can take questions. Let me give you some examples. I wanted to get this, I had some more here. Conservative reform movements are, as I said, generally speaking, built upon these old heresies. As an example, I have a quote from an article in Imprimis, Hillsdale College Speech Digest. Hillsdale College is an independent Baptist school that incidentally takes no federal money. This speech was by Harry Jaffa, a conservative professor emeritus of government from Claremont McKenna College who spoke at Hillsdale. Here's the quote from Professor Jaffa. I believe I was the first to defend Lincoln on Lincoln's own grounds. I did so by taking the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, as did Lincoln, as assertions of right reason and not merely of opinion. And I have maintained with Lincoln that right reason, no less than scripture, is the voice of God. Is that shocking or what? That's your Baptist, independent, won't take government money, college, and that's what they're putting out in their speech digest. Right reason, no less than Scripture, is the voice of God. That's to take right reason. That's to take fallen man's ideas and elevate it here. And of course, you know what Roman Catholicism does with this, right? Once you allow tradition and the decrees of councils alongside of Scripture, what happens to Scripture? Behind your back. It's the decrees of councils. And it's the statements of men that get all of the attention. What happens in Harry Jaffa's program? Right reason, no less than Scripture is the voice of God. And we don't really need this. It's something we can put behind. get rid of, because right reason is it. You see, we can have in Jaffa, we can have truth without scripture. And that's what Christians believe in our day. And they are seeking a moral consciousness within themselves in order to answer the problems of society. And again, I don't know whether my writer that was arguing about can't reproduce being the standard, whether he's a Christian or not, and some indications in the article say that he is. But that's an example of what men think. Let me close with Dr. Van Til, Cornelius Van Til, and what he says on this issue of epistemology and ethics. In the first place, it is clear. that all naturalistic ethics, which frankly accept the evolution doctrine, do not at all believe that man needs anything but immediate deliverances of his consciousness to guide him in his ethical conduct. And see, he's linking this also to the metaphysical problem. If you believe in an evolutionary concept of the world, you don't need anything but the immediate deliverances of your own consciousness to guide you in ethical conduct. That's to say, we're going to do what's right in our own eyes. All types of non-Christian ethics speak of God as revealing himself in the moral consciousness of man as though nothing had happened. as though the moral consciousness of man had not itself driven God out of its sanctuary. But the sin consciousness of man has cut itself loose from God ethically. Then after cutting himself loose from God ethically, man continued to depend upon the immediate deliverance of his moral consciousness for his moral guidance. And we may say that this is the basic difference between Christian ethics and non-Christian ethics as far as the standard is concerned. The whole thing practically amounts to this, that Christian ethics believes while non-Christian ethics does not believe that we must have our ethical standard in the Scriptures." Brilliant. A great statement. We see then that it is quite possible and quite common, even for those who make such or who make much of the Bible and profess to be writing specifically Christian ethics, to assume that God speaks immediately through the consciousness of man. Remember Harry Jaffa? Even those who claim an objective standard by seeking eternal laws in the universe or by directing the moral consciousness to the Bible as the finest of religious and ethical literature have in reality maintained the principle. That is, they're looking inside themselves in moral consciousness of man. Over and against this whole tendency of modern ethics and all non-Christian ethics, we ought to make it clear to men that we hold all authority to have disappeared in the realm of ethics unless one places the transcendent God of Scripture back of all ethical law. And he says there is no alternative but theonomy and autonomy. Because all non-Christian ethics boils down to autonomy. Okay. Now, now questions. To add to that, taking the policy class at Liberty, the idea is that because of natural law and human reason, when we're going to apply policy or debate policy of the government, We come at it with human reasoning, but as Christians we have something extra. We have good moral things that are taught in the scriptures that we can break to the table, and that's how the scriptures are viewed when it comes to public policy at Liberty University. when it comes to Christian thought. So basically, the idea is we all know what's right and what's wrong. And the Bible, as Christians, we can bring a moral teaching like everybody else can bring a moral teaching for a human being. We've got some good ideas in the Bible that we could use to apply to public policy and public business. not that that regulates anything, it's just there's good ideas, that you're poor, and such and such, and good and sound monetary policies. These are good ideas, and that's how we're to use the Bible in an application of public policy. Taking the things that we know, that we see in the light of nature, and finding where they're talked about in the scriptures, and then we can show them, see? So we would set the agenda on the basis of human reason. and say, now look, this makes perfect sense. And even scripture says this. As Calvinists, we understand the total depravity of man, and so our reasoning after the fall is tainted. I mean, that's what Paul is saying. Blackstone was trying to elude to that. So we're not going to go to ourselves with that. We're going to go to God. And as regenerated men, we have now access to the revelation of God. But even fallen man, he is commanded to go to Scripture because in there is found salvation. The means to salvation, we understand. But if we go to Scripture now as regenerated men, after time of salvation to now go forward and bring forth the Kingdom of God, understanding how to think our thoughts. Trusting God now with our saved conscience, our saved reason that the Bible talks about, of being renewed in our minds, being renewed in the knowledge and wisdom of our Creator and the image of our Creator. And so now we're taking that, like you said, reasoning. I use in my papers unaided reasoning. to know human reasoning without un-aided reasoning. And then I reveal aided reasoning as using the Bible. What's important is that the conclusion has to be met by the scripture standard as well. So we're reasoning within scripture, it interprets itself, and our conclusions are ultimately from the scripture. So it's all in all. I'm just showing you from a practical experience, which is super conservative by the way. at the forefront of a lot of good things. But you can see what's wrong with it. In other words, what they're doing is starting with reason, because we can all agree on that, and then confirming the dictates of our reason with a scripture text over here. Now, what I'm saying is, what we do is we start with scripture, and we do our reasoning from scripture. And our conclusions, when they're properly reasoned from scripture, will be confirmed from within the unbeliever, because we have plucked the knowledge of God that's dormant in there on this particular point. Now, that doesn't mean he's going to fall down and say, oh yes, I agree we should have Scripture at the basis of our society. None of that! But he's going to know inside. And if you want to gain the victory, that's what happens. Because after a while, you know, all these screaming ninnies are on the news, you know, screaming against the biblical position. But the guy on the street says, you know, I'm really just not against that. I mean, I kind of think it's a good idea. You know, you're never going to stop the screamers from screaming. But inside, the natural man will agree But, you know, Scripture is not a bad idea. Chuck Colson is, you know, he just passed away. I don't want to say anything bad about him. I wasn't happy with a lot of things in his ministry when he talked about politics particularly and his view of pluralism and so on. But, you know, this work in operation in his ministry on a couple of points, the one I'm thinking of is legal sanction, you know. where he talked about restitution. He said, you know, what our legal system should be doing is making the criminal pay back what he's stolen. And he made a point about that at one time in his ministry and then talked about the effect that it had. You know, people came to him and said, you know, that's a great idea. Where did you get that from? And he said, well, the Scriptures. But it's an example of how man's reason, fallen as it is, can be plucked on by a consistent application of Scripture. And I would not say that we shouldn't have started and said, you know what the Scripture said. They had to ask him, maybe that aspect of the story isn't so great. But I'm illustrating the fact that it works this way. You know, when you begin with Scripture and you bring the Scripture to society and you tell them what's right and wrong, they may not want to hear it. But there's a witness in that and you're working, there's churning, you know, inside of them that says, you know, that's right, that's right. Yes. And cowardice. I mean, what's the problem? Why are we afraid to say this? Well, that's And in this case in ethics, you know, natural law theory, if you want to put it in those terms, natural law theory, is a misunderstood anthropology. And, you know, whereas starting with biblical law and a theonomic approach, that God says this and this is what we should do, plucks on the anthropology, plucks on the fallenness of man, the strings that he's suppressing in unrighteousness. And we have a testimony inside of him, a point of contact he can't escape. But our authority And this is the whole issue, in other words, when you boil this down, what are we saying is our authority? Where is the authority in the system? The authority in the system of natural law is human reason. The authority in the biblical system is the Word of God. And that is all the difference in the world as far as effectiveness and truth goes. Now, we're appealing to men on the basis of assuming that their fallen reason is valid when we should be saying, thus saith the Lord. What do I mean when I say autonomous man? I mean man who is a law to himself. He views himself as independent of God and other men, and he's all by himself going to decide what's right and what's wrong in this case, in the case of ethics. Or, if I speak about autonomous man or autonomous reason, that is a man who says, My reason stands alone, independent of everybody else. And I don't need God to tell me what to think. I'm going to think my own thoughts. The philosopher was who said, I want to know what the right is regardless of what God or man says about it. And that was I forget the philosopher. One of the philosophers took that approach. So he's autonomous. He's the autonomous man with respect to reason. He's adamant. Standing alone. He's standing alone by himself. Nobody's going to tell me I'm going to know myself. I'm going to know on the basis of principles that are within me, or that I find out there in the universe, I am going to make the decision for myself. And that works for knowledge, and it works for ethics, it works for the questions of, is there a God? Autonomous man is always trying to do these things. Humanism, yeah. The thing is, as Christians, we have a lot of that. We're strong in some areas, and weak in the other areas. And so, this is the key to identifying that as we try to put sin in bed. Where are the autonomous inclinations in my fallen nature when it comes to my marriage, when it comes to my duties at work, or church? We can start identifying that, and we put that to death, even then the power of the Holy Spirit. As we start conquering that, Because that's what we're trying to say, it's not, oh look at him over there, thank God I'm not like him, I have that in me, and I need to start putting that. But it's no excuse not to tell the nations at the same time, because the programs are out there. Too much as Christians where we're saying, well it's us against them, and it's like no, we're in the same pot. The only thing is we have grace, we have the revelation of God, we have the Spirit in us. And so we need instruction, discipling in this so that we can start putting this to death. And these are the three... I mean, what we're saying as far as civil polity goes is, look, Christians quit operating on the fallen program that comes out of the garden. We've been operating on this fallen program that's from the garden government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Not pressing the Word of God and God's design and the submission of civil governments to God and His will. And then we've been operating in terms of law, on human reason, you know, and holding the Bible sort of behind our backs and not pressing its demands and so on and so forth. And when I say we've been doing this, I don't mean like, you know, since the Reagan revolution or something. I mean, I'm talking about from Aquinas, you know, in whatever Summa Theological is, 1215 or something like that. I'm talking about a thousand years or 900 years worth of this problem. You know, and enough is enough. And we're either going to, as Christians, buy into this program and stay there and fully develop the implications of the satanic program in the United States of America, or we're going to start acting like Christians and critique this stuff. So wait a minute. God's Word's the standard, you know. Now, we don't have the choice as Christians in this generation of not being at the crux of the development of this thing. I mean, we are at the crux. This is like an AIDS virus. It's full blown in our society. And we're either going to say, all right, we're going to tackle this thing with the right principles, state the right principles and take the blows as they come. Or we're going to keep working these principles in this society, and this society is going to paganism. And we'll die with it. So we don't have a choice. I mean, this is the answer, but we don't have a choice. We can't say, well, I mean, it is really important, you know, and I can see it, but I have so much so many other things that are important that I have to do in my life and forget about it. We can't do that because we don't have a choice in doing that. God has brought this providentially to a head in our own society in a way that has never been brought to a head before in any place in the Christian world. We're talking about a thousand year development to get us to this point. And the battle that's before us is the culmination of a thousand years of Christian apostasy in their thinking and principles from Aquinas, from the discovery of Aristotle and Plato's writings again, you know, and as developed through the Middle Ages, English constitutional history, Cromwell and, you know, the English Revolution. All of it comes to focus right here and right now. And we're in the generation Ours or the next one, this is going to be decided. Yeah, right. I would say that. I would say the question of the standard for penal sanctions has never been as prevalent as clearly as it is now. I would probably agree because my brother was able to meet with me last weekend on a vacation in northern Montana. And as we were discussing this in the past year, they were discussing these same issues of civil government, the army, and the men of their church. We were encouraging each other and wowing each other over probably two or three years. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. The Lord has given us an answer, you know, and we have to press the answer. We got to be faithful with it. So if I'm laying this stuff out and developing, it's not because I developed any of the answers. I don't think, well, some of them I might elucidate, but you know, they're not my answers. They're the answers he's given us. I think one of the things that I want to point out that's really important, what we see today in the battle of the news cycle and politics with conservatives and Christians versus liberals and stuff, the assumption there is that there's an actual opposite going against each other than in antithesis. And that's the lie that's there, that we're actually bringing something that's opposed to something else. And what we're trying to establish here is that we're not actually opposing one another. We're using the same weapons, the same tools, to just put forward our own agenda. But it's not God's agenda. It's God's agenda that actually pulls over the opposition through antithesis. So the true antithesis is not conservatism, liberalism, or libertarianism. It's Trinitarianism. It's Christianity. It's God's Word. That's the antithesis that actually opposes these two at every level. Let me illustrate that. If I bring to you public policy that says there should be a woman's right to choose an abortion, based upon human reason, autonomous human reason, I've come to this conclusion. And you bring to me, based on autonomous human reason, a public policy that says, no, there ought not to be the right to abortion. We ought to use adoption. We ought to use something else. The question is, is there an antithesis in the society when one autonomous position is pitted against another in terms of your doctrine of knowledge epistemology? The answer to Frank's saying is no, there's not. There is not. There's no difference in these positions. We share the same set of assumptions about the source of law and ethics as the non-Christian does. Well, it doesn't matter if we learn the principle of autonomy, that I get to reason, I get to decide, and I'm seeking law in the moral consciousness of man. If that's my principle, my conclusion is irrelevant. Because it's only going to be a matter of time until the opposite conclusion is more suitable to the moral consciousness of man. more people are getting to know homosexuals, so more people will agree, and so it becomes more of a situational evidence set about starting with the Bible. Like, there you're starting with yourself, and then in between, you know, you're even reasoning them differently, and like, you have to start with the Scripture, and then one way, and it has to conclude with that. That's right. And a good example of a recent public policy is the person who has been that keeps getting shot down in all these states. Christians are voting against the person who did it, because it's dealing with reproductive things aside from abortion. Birth control pills, in vitro fertilization, all that. it becomes a pragmatic thing, instead of just going to the scriptures where life is precious overall, and I'm not arguing against these other things, but I'm trying to show you that in the matter of public policy, as Christians, personhood amendments should be passed in every state, wherever it's put. But it's Christians themselves that are opposing it. But it's a personhood amendment that ought to be based on Leviticus, or on Exodus 21, you know, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, you know, if two men strive together and they hurt a woman with child so that her fruit departs from her and mischief follows, then it's eye for eye, tooth for tooth, wound for wound, strike for strike, burning for burning, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And that text establishes the personhood of the unborn child and the liability for injuring the unborn child is equal with the liability for injuring any other person. Now there is the place we can reason from scripture on public policy with respect to abortion. You know, and on the other hand, but again, what's happening is these reform movements share the principles of paganism while they argue against the conclusions. And that's why we don't win any battles, because God's not going to give the victory to the pagan principles. Now if you hold Christian principles and you want to attack it on a Christian basis, then we really have a battle in society. But if you're going to embrace the pagan principles and argue against the pagan conclusions, you're self-defeating at that point, and no wonder we don't win anything. It's right, it's the same principles. Let's illustrate it with tonight's example. If my approach is that I'm seeking law in the moral consciousness of man, and that inside man, that moral consciousness is really a higher law that we all ought to embrace. Now, that's my principle. My process is to say, well look, inside of you, don't you really see, no, I think there's, my moral consciousness says, right to abortion. And the other one says, no, my moral consciousness says, life is precious. We ought not to do that. Now again, we've agreed that what's legitimate here is seeking law in the moral consciousness of men. One says abortion, and they go and say, well, look, it's a hardship, you know, these children aren't wanted, you know, blah, blah, blah. You know, they've got all these reasons why we ought to abort a child. Then the Christians get together, and they say we ought not to have abortion. Different conclusion. But the question is, how do they argue their case? To what do they appeal in the arguing of their case? And when we examine that, we find they're appealing to the moral consciousness that's inside of men. They have the same principles as the ones they're arguing against. And you say, well, you know, you wonder why they lose? No, I don't wonder why they lose. They lose because they have pagan principles. God's not giving the victory to that kind of an argument. If you would say, thus saith the Lord, and say to the kings, you know, it's your responsibility to enforce the law of God. And God has clearly revealed in His law that a child is entitled to legal rights. The text is Exodus 21, 15 to 18, something like that. You know, and that's where we ought to go to establish these things. The lex talionis of Scripture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. etc., etc. is spoken in the first place, the first place it appears, specifically in order to establish the personhood of the unborn child. Legally, before God, the judges are required to view that child, unborn, as entitled to all the rights of personhood. That's where we go for our answer, and that's the standard. And thus saith the Lord, if you judges don't want to enforce the law of God in our land, I'm serving you notice, you wipe away that part of the law, you're going to wipe away the right to liberty and property also. You want to ignore life, you want to do away with life, you're going to do away with liberty and property. You know, you don't want to serve God in your administration, and we can say this to the people of our country, and you don't want to obey the law of God, don't think you're going to be free. You're not going to be free. And there's no doubt about the fact that what we've done in our society is to attack life, liberty, and property on the basis of the evolutionary thinking. that has come in the last 150 years. Those concepts are nearing meaninglessness. And I'll go a step further, the generation that slaughtered their children for convenience sake will in their old age be executed when it's inconvenient to keep them around any longer. And they will fall into the pit that they've dug in this society. And so Sarah Palin, you know, with her death panels, you know, it's coming. And that's what's going to happen. And their principles, again, they said, well, you know, we don't want a child right now. You're going to be slaughtered by your children. Because who wants to take care of old people? They're inconvenient. The Christian argument for that abortion would be psychological. All the women have been shown that they have psychological issues after abortion. Society doesn't thrive when children aren't here, when families aren't able to populate. That would be the Christian argument. It's just a pragmatic argument on one side to the other. And we're trying to one-up it by being more articulate, by pointing to the Bible for certain things, but this is not my authority. I just happen to be a Christian. A Muslim will come and say homosexuality is bad. Because the Quran says this. See, we all know it's wrong. So let's not do it. It's just false. There's no approach. Even if it's a biblical conclusion, if your methodology is wrong, God's not pleased with it. He doesn't give the victory. Some pagans get it right. Some pagans do put some laws out that are right. You know what I mean? But they're not giving God glory for that. I mean, they're not Christians. Praise the Lord. That's all you need is that scripture. You need to come to church, you need to have good instruction from the disciples, the scriptures. Pastor, anything else you want to say? I just, even though it's a situation of abortion, you're talking about a situation of, you know, ethics and how things evolve due to situations in God's work, doesn't it? But, yeah, situations due to what we accept and notice. If we're just in a situation of abortion, you've got one side We've got laws that protect someone born, if the mother is pregnant with a child or something of that nature, and she's murdered and the child or other person is going to be criminal for two counts of murder. But a mother can legally go and abort. So it depends on, it's kind of like a situation. It's like this mother wants that child, so that child's life means something. This mother doesn't, so that child's life doesn't mean anything. One other example, let's take the Christian legislator who is willing to pass legislation to outlaw abortion, but he makes exceptions, except in the case of rape or incest. Now, once more, this is human reasoning entering into the process when God says, If the children shall not be put to death for the sins of the fathers, then he establishes that that's illegitimate. Because what you're saying is, well, that was a horrible thing that was done there, and that father, you know, well, we'll let that child die. No. The child not to be put to death for the sin of the father, there's the application that he should be pointing to. When they raise the possibility of exceptions, he should be saying, no, thus saith the Lord. The Lord says this, and you know, and so on. One time I was on a panel in a discussion, I presented the dichotomy between human reason and revelation in a presentation. And on the speaker engagement with me this time was a Christian legislator from the state house in Pennsylvania. And he made the point, he said, you know, I'm part of a I'm a Christian in legislature. I'm a Christian legislator. I'm in Congress with other Christians. When all we Christians get around, this is how the discussion goes. Well, we really have this raping problem. What do we think should be done with the rapist? And he says, 201, they'll all say he should be castrated. And that's what we should do. And again, it's autonomous reason coming to the forefront, and then, of course, He was different. He brought the answer from the word of God. What should be done or sought to, you know, and so you see how the Christians are so infected with this thing. Christian legislators think like Muslims, you know, when it comes to, you know, what should we do? Well, we should. Well, I think, you know, again, I think that's what should happen. That's autonomous man reasoning from, you know, the circumstances. But let me pray. Father in Christ, we ask that you would teach us these things, that we could see this clearly in our own lives and in our world to the point where we understand the difference between reasoning as Christians and using your word and being like the pagans doing what's right in our own minds. and thinking our own thoughts. We pray you would help us with this and it would apply in our lives in a host of areas and finally also in respect of civil polity. So be with us in these things we pray and teach us. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.