The Nature of Nature

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Unbelievers live in the world, and this is why we must continue to insist on the authority of nature. They also live in the world defined by Scripture, but they are more inclined to deny this than to deny they live in the world. Not only so, but whenever they deny that they live in the world defined by the enscripturated Word, Christians are more inclined to let them get away with it. This is because Christians accept the Bible, and non-Christians don’t. Everybody lives in the world, like it or not.

Right, and this is why we must continue to insist that the world has a nature, and that this nature is teleologically structured. There is an entelechy to all things, and this purpose, this telos, this intention, this embodiment, was determined by the God who made the world. The world has a nature. Whenever we speak of Nature, we are simply expressing this truth in a shorthand way.

But we are currently living in the midst of a large-scale revolt against nature and nature’s God, and this revolt wants to say that “nature” is a blank, that it has no nature, and that man can therefore impose whatever he wants on it. The godly man wants his dominion to be the result of an obedient conforming to the way things are, while the ungodly man wants his dominion to be the result of whatever he wills, and what he wills is almost always wired up to his lusts somehow.

According to the theorists of this revolt, the world is a lump of dough, to be shaped into whatever forms the masters of the universe in question desire for it. Sarte’s phrase for this was that “existence precedes essence,” and he touted the idea that human beings do not possess any inherent nature or value, and that everything we become is therefore a function of the will. Just as Nixon surrendered economic sanity by allegedly saying “we are all Keynesians now,” so also fickle Christians seem to be readying themselves for the time when they can say “we are all existentialists now.” It turns out the Cities of the Plain have a theological society, and we have a bunch of guys who are desperate not to get kicked out of it.

But the world has a nature. The world is not a colorless, odorless lump of stuff for which humans can volunteer to be the demiurge. Nature has a grain, and that grain must be honored, respected, and obeyed. Without an assumption of this fixed given-ness of nature, justice becomes an impossibility. Suppose you were to set the family dog to fold the laundry, and then punished him severely if he did a poor job. This would be a gross injustice because you failed to take into account what a dog is.

In the same way, if you do not know what a man is, and if you do not know what a woman is, you are setting the stage for grotesque sexual injustice. If you do not know what a prepubescent child is, then you cannot know what sexual molestation is. If the nature of things does not have a nature, then everything is lost. If our deep thinkers want to kick against the authority of nature, I would simply cut to the chase and ask them to formulate why a sex change operation would be a travesty and abomination. If they cannot or will not do it, then this is because they have already surrendered to the central tenet of sexual existentialism. I do not want to know whether they are for or against same-sex mirage — I want to hear their case against it. If that case does not involve the nature of nature, then at worst they have already gone over to the other side, and at best they have been taken prisoner.

I should also add that once sexuality has become a matter of the will, we have set the theoretical stage for every form of coercion — from the strong-arming of evangelical wedding photographers to the construction of rape rooms.

In saying all this, I continue to insist that I am a classical Protestant, and a Van Tilian. I prefer to speak of natural revelation, in distinction from natural law. I am suspicious whenever people want to leave the Bible out of our discussions of what should go on in the public square. I want the authority of the Lord Jesus to be confessed by the House and Senate, and I want the president to sign it. So I trust my bona fides are in order.

But I give these qualifications because I continue to be dismayed that the homo revolt is being opposed more effectively and consistently and rigorously by Thomistic natural law theorists than it is by the erstwhile heirs of Bahnsen and Rushdoony. I believe that this is the result of some form of dryrot that has gotten into our floor joists, and which makes our people willing to retreat to a biblicism that wants to posture inside a faith community — but because we want to come off like conservatives, we don’t use the phrase faith community. This “retreat to commitment” wants to pretend that the God who gave us a Bible with set characteristics did not do the same thing when He gave us us a world with set characteristics — with the set characteristics of the Word and the world being fully consistent with one another. By that, I mean a woman in the Bible has the same nature as a woman in the world. The world described in the Bible is the very same world in which the sexual existentialists are conducting their bizarre and perverse experiments. This is why the end of their revolt against nature will be that nature will revolt against them.

Luther once called Aristotle “that Greek buffoon,” and as a biblical absolutist, I do understand the point. But everything hinges on what you are comparing him to. We do have to recognize that when it comes to this question of nature’s nature, Aristotle was closer to the kingdom than some of our modern theologian squishes — conservatives intent on conserving nothing.

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Thursday
Thursday
9 years ago

Amen, it all does come down to differences in cosmologies. If human bodies are just made up of meaningless hunks of stuff, it doesn’t really matter who sticks what where, so long as nobody gets their feelers hurt, of course. Also, this is especially important to us as Christians. The modern materialist conception of reality would reduce the incarnation to dumping God into a hunk of bits. The universe capable of bearing the Godhead must be a rich tapestry of forms, essences, meanings and purposes. And if we merely add on to that a sort of Cartesian soul, if the… Read more »

Brian
Brian
9 years ago

I think the reason why Thomists are defending marriage more effectively than the Bahnsenists are is because Thomistic metaphysics is more correct than presuppositionalism. Thomism starts with trying to understand the nature of reality itself and validates it by agreeing with the Bible. Presuppositionalism starts with a commitment to scripture and ends with appeals to internal coherency. Unfortunately I think this approach ends in post-modern relativism. By not grounding the approach as corresponding to reality independent of our worldviews there isn’t any reason to think that their moral reasoning should be necessarily true, whereas Thomism can make that claim.

Eric the Red
Eric the Red
9 years ago

Doug, I would find this entire line of argument far more persuasive if you didn’t insist on ignoring how nature behaves in actual practice, in favor of how the Bible says it’s supposed to behave, whether it actually behaves that way or not.  Do you think homosexuality doesn’t exist in nature?  It does, across large numbers of species.  I don’t see how you can appeal to nature while at the same time ignoring what nature actually does.
 

Bryan Valoran
Bryan Valoran
9 years ago

Eric, Genocidal behavior is also common in the animal kingdom, as is polygamy, polyandry, fratricide and a whole host of other behaviors considered immoral by the standards of human society. Some of these are likely the result of the fall, and others are simply the way those animal kinds were designed to operated (e.g. polyandry or polygamy). Sheep are not violating natural law when a single ram services 20 ewes. That’s just how sheep roll. There are other “homosexual” situations in the animal kingdom where brokenness is clearly evident. For example, when penguins males pair up, they have been observed… Read more »

Doane
Doane
9 years ago

Eric,
Im trying to follow your line here. Is your premise that because homosex is found in nature therefore its natural and acceptable, or just that Dougs thinking doesn’t seem consistent with whats found in nature and his view? If the first scenario, this opens up all the rape, incest and murder we find in nature. Which is far more than the homo animals. 
Darren

carole
carole
9 years ago

Eric,
Hasn’t the scientific community itself argued against this kind of reasoning? Only very rarely and under abnormal circumstances could homosexuality as we understand the word now be used to describe animal behavior. If you mean examples like dog dominance behaviors that is not how we talk about being “gay”. Your own arguments for evolution would have to knock out animal homosexuality as normal, wouldn’t they?

Thursday
Thursday
9 years ago

[T]he point is to study nature, not copy it straight across. Everything has meaning and purpose, but that doesn’t tell you whether the meaning and purpose are good or bad. As Oliver O’Donovan said in Resurrection and Moral Order, you have to look at the purpose of the whole cosmos to tell how smaller purposes fit in. This is something I’ve noticed about not a few poets who don’t want to go against the zeitgeist too much (Shelley comes to mind): being poets, they don’t want to propose a meaningless, purposeless universe, so they posit that the purposes and meanings… Read more »

Thursday
Thursday
9 years ago

The following is based mainly on my reading of Jonathan Haidt, Alasdair MacIntyre, Mary Douglas, as well as my readings in the psychology of religion, including people like Stuart Guthrie and Bruce Charlton.

Thursday
Thursday
9 years ago

I have been thinking about religion, purity and teleology. They seem to go together, but the logic behind that grouping is not immediately clear, and I don’t think anyone has really tried to link them up. —————————– I’m going to take gay sex as my main example, as it provides the best illustration of exactly how religion, purity and teleology are linked. Opposition to things like gay sex seems to be highly correlated with Jonathan Haidt’s purity foundation. Religion also seems to be highly correlated with the purity foundation. Hence, religion is highly correlated with opposition to gay sex. And… Read more »

Thrica
9 years ago

The world’s natural entelechy is, without the light of scripture, obscure. Why would an unbeliever submit to the Christian interpretation of “nature” if he doesn’t submit to scripture? Natural law is totally uncompelling without the Gospel, and totally unnecessary with it. So why bother?

Eric the Red
Eric the Red
9 years ago

Doane, to answer your question, I think any appeal to nature is a waste of time, for two reasons.  First, we override nature all the time; if we didn’t we wouldn’t wear clothes, fly airplanes, or vaccinate our children.  Second, it’s largely subjective and subject to confirmation bias.  If homo sapiens was the only species in which homosexuality occurred, Doug would cite that as evidence that homosexuality is sinful, fallen behavior; because it is found in other species, the argument shifts and becomes that what other species do is irrelevant to what God wants humans to do.  That is not a… Read more »

Eric the Red
Eric the Red
9 years ago

Carole, evolution would say that if everyone were gay, human life would come to a screeching halt after a single generation.  But not only is everyone not gay; only a small percentage is; much too small, in fact, to impact the survival of the human race.  It’s a biological anomaly, just as being left handed is a biological anomoly, and has no more impact on human survival.
 

Eric the Red
Eric the Red
9 years ago

“I can’t see how a true commitment to start with Scripture as the Word that defines all things can consistently wind up leaving some things out.”  And Doug, respectfully, that’s the problem.  You start with an assumption that is completely at odds with observation of the world around us.  Yet, because that is your assumption, it *must* be true.  In fact, you’re not even allowed to test the assumption, or to entertain any contrary evidence.  So, when the assumption keeps coming back at odds with what certainly appears to be objective reality, your only real recourse is to  claim that… Read more »

Eric the Red
Eric the Red
9 years ago

The testing system is the five senses — I know that the laws of physics are still in full force and effect because I can see, hear, taste, smell and touch the results, plus other testers consistently get the same results.  If that testing system is flawed, then I have no way of knowing anything to be true, and this entire conversation is pointless.

Fake Herzog
9 years ago

As the number one Catholic A-T metaphysics believing fan of Pastor Wilson, I just thought I should jump in and defend my belief system from Erik’s confusions. We look to nature to understand purposes. What is the purpose of man’s sexual organs? To procreate. So the proper end of sex is to conceive children. Note two things: the Bible of course confirms this Truth and (speaking now as a Catholic) it logically follows that we should not deliberately frustrate the telos of sex (i.e. use contraception). BUT, Erik objects — why do some people like to have sex with men?… Read more »

Fake Herzog
9 years ago

Just realized that when I said “some people” in the above comment I meant to say “some men” (in case it wasn’t obvious).

And a belated and blessed Easter to Doug and all his readers.

Eric the Red
Eric the Red
9 years ago

Fake Herzog, the late Ayn Rand once wrote an unintentionally hilarious essay in which she said that it was obvious that nature intended for people to smoke because the webbing between the fingers is perfect for holding a cigarette. It is not known if she continued to hold that view after she was diagnosed with lung cancer. Your comments about the purpose of sex are on the same level.

Fake Herzog
9 years ago

“Your comments about the purpose of sex are on the same level.”

Oh, so you’ll avoid making an intelligent argument and retreat to snark and a story that has nothing to do with what I said. That’s fine, but if you want to learn a thing or two before making a fool of yourself again, I suggest the place to start is this book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Superstition-Refutation-Atheism/dp/1587314525

Brian
Brian
9 years ago

Doug, Is your main point herein basically that you want to continue to demolish vain speculations that are in disobedience to Christ raised up against the knowledge of God (2 Co 10:6) with more prominent/plentiful explanations of how the presupposed truths of Scripture are CONFIRMED (vs. PROVEN from a pretended higher or ultimate epistemic authority) by using ‘evidences’ of the perceived contingent causal and consequential regularities of the world? And so, for instance, while a believer is reasoning (in a debate) with an unbeliever, perhaps a homosexual like Andrew Sullivan, the believer after having been accustomed to think in such… Read more »

Brian
Brian
9 years ago

Doug, I meant to write “… against the knowledge of God (2 Co 10:5)” in my above comment.

Eric the Red
Eric the Red
9 years ago

Fake Herzog, here’s the intelligent argument: Just because something has one purpose doesn’t mean it can’t have other purposes as well. Just because you think something has any purpose at all doesn’t mean it does. Just because two things work well together doesn’t mean one of them was designed with the other in mind or that one of them doesn’t also play a role in other things. Your argument has undistributed middle, assumes facts not in evidence, equivocates, and has a conclusion that doesn’t follow from the premise. Other than that, I suppose it’s a good argument.

Mike Bull
9 years ago

A woman in the Bible has the same nature as a woman in the world. But we need the Bible to reveal to us what the nature of a woman in the world actually is. Also, the 5 point Covenant stuff does a good job of simplifying all this for us. God tells us that He owns everything, then He delegates His authority, tells us what to do to get good results, assesses those results, and then we enjoy fellowship with Him as co-regents (at whatever level history is at at the time). My favorite phrase for these “results” is… Read more »

Matt
Matt
9 years ago

and what he wills is almost always wired up to his lusts somehow.

Is that not man’s nature?

Eric also makes a good point. Humans subvert nature all the time. The most pertinent example for our topic here is birth control.

Incidentally, why did you get rid of the formatting buttons on the comments?

Fake Herzog
9 years ago

Eric, Oh my goodness! After approximately 2,500 years (give or take a few hundred) in one simple blog comment you have finally managed to effectively refute A-T philosophy and the concept of telos. Well done. I have nothing more to say. Not. “Just because something has one purpose doesn’t mean it can’t have other purposes as well.” Yes, theoretically something could be designed for more than one purpose. But you’d need an argument to demonstrate what that purpose is and remember, a telos is about final ends, not instrumental ends. “Just because you think something has any purpose at all… Read more »

Fake Herzog
9 years ago

Eric,

You really do need to start doing some basic reading on the subject matter to get yourself up to speed. I suggest starting here and coming back in about six months when you’ve absorbed some of the material:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/10/whose-nature-which-law.html#more

timothy
timothy
9 years ago

@Dave and @Fake Herzog.

My compliments on your erudite comments; they are both educational and a pleasure to read.

katecho
katecho
9 years ago

Eric the Red wrote: “Just because something has one purpose doesn’t mean it can’t have other purposes as well.” Unfortunately for Eric’s materialism, nothing has any purpose. Nothing comes with any intended function at all. Even sex organs are a pure accident, because our existence as sexual organisms, rather than asexual organisms, is also an accident. Even man’s behavior of assigning ad hoc purposes to things is just another accident. Now all of us who live in the natural world see with our eyes, we hear with our ears, and we touch with our hands. Some of us even think… Read more »

Fake Herzog
9 years ago

Well said katecho! I just wanted to make one more reading recommendation to Eric and really to all of Pastor Wilson’s fans. Professor Feser is excellent but he is kind of intense at first. Another excellent guide to natural law thinking, or natural revelation if you prefer, is the philosopher J. Budziszewski. His style is very different from Ed’s — more accessible I think (although he is rigorous in his thinking). Here is just one sample from Touchstone magazine: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=18-06-022-f You can find more of his articles and a link to all his books (he has one dealing with just… Read more »

Kimberley
Kimberley
9 years ago

Conservatives who want to conserve nothing…That would be the Republican Party of Nevada. :-/ They just threw their support behind same sex mirage and the sacrifice of human babies to Molech.

DCHammer
9 years ago

Agree. Budz is good. When you’re done reading his stuff on natural law. Check out his articles “The Problem With Liberalism” and “The Problem With Conservatism” at First Things archives. Some of the best stuff on a Christian approach to politics that I’ve read.

Eric the Red
Eric the Red
9 years ago

Fake Herzog, the problem with your argument is that even if I accept every one of your premises, your conclusion doesn’t follow, because you have not established that sex was designed by anyone, that procreation is the only purpose of sex (I could list a half dozen others without breaking a sweat), or that sex requires a purpose other than the pleasure it gives its participants. You’ve shown none of that. Plus, I doubt very much that you even believe that procreation is the only purpose of sex; are you suggesting that heterosexual married couples past their childbearing years must… Read more »

Eric the Red
Eric the Red
9 years ago

Katecho, you might try finding someone whose worldview actually matches the claims against it that you’re making to argue with.

Fake Herzog
9 years ago

Eric, You say, because you have not established that sex was designed by anyone, that procreation is the only purpose of sex (I could list a half dozen others without breaking a sweat), or that sex requires a purpose other than the pleasure it gives its participants Your confidence is matched by the emptiness of your rhetoric. Please try and pay attention to the discussion. As Ed Feser says in this paper, “The telos of a thing or process is the end or goal toward which it points.” http://www.epsociety.org/userfiles/art-Feser%20(Teleology)(1).pdf It is quite obvious that pleasure is not the end of… Read more »

Eric the Red
Eric the Red
9 years ago

Fake Herzog, it does not follow from “sex is the only way to make babies” that “making babies is the only reason to have sex”. Just as “Juneau is only accessible by plane and ferry” does not mean that “Juneau is the only place planes and ferries go.” Or that “only people with law degrees are allowed to practice law” means that “practicing law is the only career path for someone with a law degree.” Do you honestly not get this? Just to be clear, since apparently you’re new here, I’m a utilitarian, which means that any purpose I find… Read more »

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
9 years ago

If I have understood him correctly, Pastor Wilson regrets that, in the attempt to shore up opposition to same sex marriage, appeals to natural law seem to be more persuasive than appeals to Biblical authority. Thomistic natural law, while derived from an understanding of man’s duty to his Creator, ought to be less persuasive than the flat condemnation found in Leviticus. I suppose I can understand a preference for obedience based on literal adherence to scripture over an obedience based on an attempt at rational understanding. But what I can’t understand is why the Rushdoony-type argument would be persuasive to… Read more »

timothy
timothy
9 years ago

Jill that is well stated.

As a thought experiment can you envision conditions where American’s would freely choose to live under “Rushdoony-ism”?

Ryan
Ryan
9 years ago

Jill,

You keep using the buzz word ‘literal.’ I’m not sure it fits. The first time you use it, it is not necessary. The second time the word, along with ‘taken’ should both be together changed to just the word ‘followed.’
It is not about toleration or what sounds best, and it is not even about persuasion. It is about authority.

Brian
Brian
9 years ago

Jill, I also find Rushdoony speculative in his analyses quite a bit, but I do appreciate his goal of attempting to apply “every word” (Dt 8:3; Mt 4:4) of “All of Scripture” (2 Tim 3:16) through a New Testament lens. Nevertheless, one afternoon of reading Rushdoony has been enough for me thus far. And, yes trying to have folks obey the word of God that was given through Moses will generally be less tolerable than those shameless disobedient parades. Paul clearly says that men who have their mind set on the flesh hate God’s law (Ro 8:7); unlike Paul, whose… Read more »

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
9 years ago

Brian, thank you so much for your comprehensive and erudite answer. I am reading and re-reading in small segments, and I want to make sure I understand thoroughly before I ask any more questions. I appreciated your point about why the reasons for opposition to SSM are important.

Brian
Brian
9 years ago

You’re welcome, Jill. Thank you for your serious consideration. Here are some corrections for some regretted typos: i. In the paragraph that begins with “Additionally, this use of ‘natural law'” should have the misplaced/redundant string of words “ought to be carr through due process (Dt 17:7,8,9,10; Ro 13:1,2,3,4)” removed / struck out so that it reads as: “… that (unlike rape) these crimes, even if committed consensually, always ‘in principle’ deserves the just and worthy recompense (Heb 2:2) of the death penalty by one’s society that ought to be carried out ‘in fact’ through the State’s due process (Dt 17:9,10,11,12;… Read more »