For it is the Law of Nature and Nature’s God
Church government needs a doctrine of natural law. This might seem a surprising claim for a Presbyterian to make. While there is a growing recognition today that Protestants need to recover the teaching of natural law, it seems to be generally assumed that natural law applies exclusively within the realm of civil government – not within the church.
I am making two claims. First, that the confessional tradition of Presbyterianism clearly upholds a doctrine of natural law which applies within the church. Secondly, I argue that neglecting natural law is one of the chief causes of the growing bureaucratization of the church.
Natural law and Presbyterian ecclesiology
The fundamental principle of Presbyterian ecclesiology is that “[t]he Lord Jesus, as king and head of His Church, has therein appointed a government, in the hand of Church officers, distinct from the civil magistrate” (Westminster Confession of Faith, 30.1).
The Confession also unambiguously affirms the sufficiency of Scripture:
“The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men” (WCF 1.6).
It might seem that this leaves little scope for natural law, especially within the church. It might be thought that extra-biblical moral rules undermine the sufficiency of Scripture and burden the consciences of others.
Nevertheless, the Protestant tradition recognizes that there are some principles which are not expressly taught in Scripture but which are morally binding. In the very same paragraph as that just quoted, the Westminster Confession also states that:
there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature, and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed (WCF 1.6).
The “light of nature” referred to in this paragraph is reason, that is, the inbuilt witness to the natural law. The Confession here recognizes that the light of nature (or natural law) contains requirements which are relevant to church worship and government, which must always be observed.
What are these principles? The Confession itself does not specify, but contemporary writings provide valuable guidance. The treatise The Divine Right of Church-Government was published around the time the Westminster Confession was completed, and is often considered to be the Westminster Assembly’s defense of the principles of Presbyterianism.
The treatise gives three examples of principles which are found in the “light of nature” and even states that such principles are of “divine right”:
in the present case of church government, that which is agreeable to the true light of nature must necessarily be confessed to be of jure divino [divine right]. Though light of nature is but dim, yet it will lend some help in this particular. For example, light of nature teaches:
(1) That as every society in the world has a distinct government of its own within itself, without which it could not subsist, so must the church, which is a society, have its own distinct government within itself, without which it cannot subsist, no more than any other society.
(2) That in all matters of difference, the lesser number in every society should give way to, and the matters controverted be determined and concluded by the major part; else there would never be an end. And why not so in the Church?
(3) That in every ill-administration in inferior societies, the parties grieved should have liberty to appeal from them to superior societies, that equity may take place. And why not from inferior to superior church assemblies?
That is, the Westminster Confession recognizes the existence of principles arising from the light of nature or reason which are not directly taught in Scripture, and states that these principles “are always to be observed” in worship and church government.
Therefore, the mature confessional articulation of Reformed theology, the Westminster Confession, clearly affirms the need for natural law within the church.
The need for natural law today
So much for history. Why do we need natural law within the church today?
First, let’s recount the historic Christian understanding of law. The historic view of the Christian tradition is that human positive law (whether civil or church law) must be based on the natural law. The natural law establishes universally applicable principles of morality which apply to all people at all times. However, the moral law is indeterminate: it gives the general obligation or principle but not the specifics. Human laws provide these details, particularizing the moral law in specific contexts. Thus, the moral law provides the foundation, and human positive laws build on this foundation to establish concrete legal obligations.
Without a sense of natural law – the overriding and objective standard of right and wrong – law is merely the will of the lawmaker. This, of course, is precisely what we find in the realm of civil law today. The West has lost a shared belief in objective moral standards, such that governments can no longer rely on the virtue of the people to do the right thing. This results in the perceived need to enact ever more detailed and prescriptive laws regulating ever more aspects of society.
Modern Western governments also accept the principle of legal positivism, which is the view that whatever the lawmaker decrees to be law is law. Provided that a law passes the relevant procedure for enactment as a law (i.e. passage through both houses of congress and receiving executive assent), then it is legally binding. There is no higher standard to which civil law must conform in order for it to be law.
That is, legal positivism is essentially the view that human legislative will is sovereign. Obviously enough, no Christian can accept such a principle.
In sum, there is an increasingly prescriptive regulation of every aspect of society in the West, driven by the loss of any sense of objective moral order – in short, the lack of a doctrine of natural law. Worryingly, an almost identical trend is happening within the church – and for largely identical reasons.
Scripture provides the foundational principles of church government, such as rule by elders and ascending levels of church courts. However, it does not prescribe every detail of church life and government. It is up to churches to decide the minutiae of church life, from the time at which services are held to the procedure for holding meetings and determining appeals.
As noted above, the Westminster Confession’s view of ecclesiology is predicated on the existence of principles of the light of nature which mediate between the foundational principles of Scripture, and the detailed minutiae of church life. Natural law was almost universally accepted by Protestants until the nineteenth century. However, there is little acceptance of the principle of natural law within the Protestant world today.
The rejection of natural law means that most Protestants do not recognize the existence of principles of the light of nature within the church. That is, in between the high-level principles contained in Scripture, and the detailed minutiae of church life, there is precisely nothing. The specifics of church life and ecclesiology are simply to be determined by church bodies as a matter of majoritarian decision-making. What this means in practice is that vast realms of church life are simply a matter of human decision and prescription, with little or no connection to an overriding standard of justice and morality.
And the result is, in practice, similar to what is occurring in the civil realm: an increasingly bureaucratic regulation of the life of the church, reflected in bloated church codes and managerial ecclesiology. Given that the church today has lost an understanding of natural law, it looks to prescriptive church codes to fill the void.
In other words, church codes are largely a matter of fiat legislation: whatever the church promulgating body determines to be law is law. That, of course, is the principle of legal positivism. And legal positivism is – or should be – utterly foreign to Christian ecclesiology.
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