A Natural Duty

A Friendly Response to Andrew Walker

On X last week, my friend Andew Walker argued that “only eligible entities (i.e., persons) as a category have an obligation to confess the one true God.” By eligible entities he means entities that can attain salvation (“for whom redemption is possible”). He means not nations but only people of nations. He continues, “The government qua government is a natural law institution and is not an object of the covenant of redemption.” Therefore, the conclusion that “The government qua government is not capable of acknowledging the one true God.” For Walker this is different than entities honoring “God the Creator.” So “honor” and “acknowledgment” are apparently distinct here.

It’s not quite clear how but I think honor is doing the work of simple performance. Meaning, a “natural law institution”—not quite sure what that is either—honors God when it performs the duties ascribed to it by (and only by) the mode of revelation by which it receives them. For Walker, since government is strictly a “natural law institution” it is limited in its duties by a ceiling of natural revelation. It cannot acknowledge the Triune God because the full revelation of that God is attained only through special revelation which a “natural law institution” is incapable of receiving or doing anything with. But it can honor the Triune God by performing its duties rightly even if it does not know what or who the Triune God is. Something like that. “Natural law institutions” can’t do anything that might extend to those things above reason.

Walker was responding to Stephen Wolfe’s syllogism:

“All moral entities ought to acknowledge the true God in word and deed.

The nation is a moral entity.

Therefore, the nation ought to acknowledge the true God in word and deed.

The true God is the Triune God.

Therefore, the nation ought to acknowledge the Triune God in word and deed.”

This is, of course, a valid syllogism. Walker wants to take issue with it, but instead of invalidating any of the major or minor premises he inserts an artificial distinction between “honor” and “acknowledge,” and further fills in “acknowledge” with salvific, redemptive content. He’s equating “acknowledge” with a personal acceptance of Christ by grace through faith for the atonement of sins, or something like that. This is not a refutation of Wolfe’s syllogism, but a category confusion. (Note too that Walker jumped from “nation” to “government” inexplicably. Another category error since government (or a regime) cannot and should not be equated to the nation.)

But let’s investigate Walker’s statement on its own. (Nota bene, this “statement” was a long tweet, not an essay; this interaction is for the sake of discussion.) And we will talk about governments rather than nations as he does.  

What if the acknowledgement of the Triune God is, in fact, a natural law duty for “natural law institutions”? This is, as it turns out, the case. Now, before we proceed, I am not sure what “acknowledge” means even in Wolfe’s syllogism, but let’s assume it equates to the historically typical duties ascribed to nations and governments. Perhaps, it could mean acknowledgement in the simple sense: God’s name invoked publicly in official pronouncements, on buildings, in treatise, and etc. That’s all well and good but, again, we will stick to natural law duties for “natural law institutions.” This is a more profitable and concrete inquiry, and certainly the performance of duties to God promulgated by the light and law of nature that are performed rightly function as an acknowledgment.

The case I’m making is not simply that Christian magistrates should protect and promote religion, but that it is encoded in the DNA, so to speak, the office to care for religion in this way. And if a magistrate, heathen or Christian, is charged with this care, then it should be the true religion. This introduces a requirement, a duty, to seek out true religion even through means of special revelation.

To begin, for the basic point, Augustine (Contra Crescentium): “Kings are commanded to establish good things and prohibit evil in their kingdoms, not only in things belonging to civil society, but in such things also that belong to divine religion.”

I’ve cited this passage often, but William Prynne (Sword of Christian Magistracy) perceives rightly when he ascribes this duty even to pagan kings as a matter of fact:

“Now, what was the ground of Nebuchadnezzar’s, and these other Pagan Idolaters’… corporal Censures, and capitall Proceedings against the Servants, Apostles and Saints of God, but this? they deemed them Hereticks, false Teachers, Opposers, and Blasphemes of their Idol-gods, and false Religions, which they embraced, beleeved as the true: For as the very light of Nature instructs all Nations that there is a God, and instigates them to elect and adore some Deity or other as their God and Savior: So it farther instructs them, that that Deity they adore, and that Religion they imbrace is no ways to be openly blasphemed, reviled, oppugned, contemned, under pain of the most severe capital punishments, because such offences against the supreamest Majesty of God transcend any Treason against an earthly Soveraign… and by the light of Nature in all ages punished such whom they esteemed Atheists, Hereticks, Blasphemers of their gods, or oppugners of their established Religion… [Although] ‘Tis true, most of these erred in the object, in deeming that Heresie, Schism, Blasphemy, Error, which was not.”

In other words, this is simply what all kings everywhere do, in some regard. Nebuchadnezzar was in principle right to punish blasphemy and idolatry as a matter of natural law duty, he was simply wrong in the object. William Ames (Marrow of Sacred Divinity) agreed that all kings, even those only armed with natural law, understand and do this: “the Heathens themselves by the light of nature did see, that the care of Religion is to bee preferred before all other things.” Prynne and Ames, apart from the instructions of Romans 13, understand this magistral function to be basic, inescapable, and universally practiced—rightly so. The only thing Christianity does is provide the true religion to this function.

I’ve quoted this before too, but Peter Clarke’s 1736 election sermon gets this right.

“Let me observe, That there is no Alteration made in those Things that are founded on the Law of Nature or Nations, by the Religion of the New Testament of our Saviour. It being very remote from the Design of Christ, or of the first Preachers of the Gospel, to erect a new civil Polity in the World, or to abolish any Ordinance of Man for the Preservation of the Peace and Order of civil Society.”

Anthony Burgess says something similar in the Vindiciae Legis, viz., what “the common Law of Nature, and the perpetual Law of God requires” is not abrogated by the New Testament. How could it be when the law of nature is concreated with and implanted in man himself? No new principle of social order or magistral function is introduced by the Gospel, though true religion is more fully delivered thereby, and civil authorities have a duty, as a proscription of natural law, to take notice and act accordingly.

Shifting back to the continent, Francis Turretin (Institutes) refutes the Papist view that care of religion is no business of the civil pastor (magistrate). Rather, “he ought to care for the piety and worship of God, which is commanded by the first, no less than for justice and love, which is commanded by the second table.” A magistrate’s interest is not only in the procurement of temporal goods for his people, “but what is far more necessary, spiritual and heavenly goods.” Hence, magistrates are variously called in scripture, “gods,” “pastors,” and “fathers.” Turretin’s chapter on the political government of the church, explicating how all this cashes out, is essential reading, but we’ll just highlight here what is pertinent to our present inquiry. The first demonstration of Turretin’s position (i.e., that of the orthodox), is Aristotle, who “assigns ‘the service of religion’ the principal place among those things without which the state cannot exist.” Note well here that implied is a shared religion, not a plurality. Plato too said “Special regard must be paid to religion in the state,” for it is the “bond of all society and the pillar of just law.” And finally, Turretin invokes Cicero who called religion “the foundation of human society.”

So then, in Turretin’s case we see not only that the ancients knew of this duty but that it is wrapped up in the very foundations of society. Meaning, as Richard Baxter put it, a society without religion is like a body without a soul, an inanimate corpse.

Lastly, for my Baptist brethren, John Gill (Body of Divinity). Noting that the principal care of the magistrate is the “welfare and safety of his people… salus populi suprema lex esto,” a point on which all would have agreed, he continues,   

“They [i.e., magistrates] are to discountenance and suppress impiety and irreligion; and to countenance and encourage religion and virtue; even Aristotle observes in his book of Politics, that the first care of government should be the care of divine things, or what relate to religion… Kings are the guardians of the laws of God and man; and Christian kings have a peculiar concern with the laws of the two tables, that they are observed, and the violaters of them punished; as sins against the first table, idolatry, worshipping of more gods than one, and of graven images, blaspheming the name of God, perjury, and false swearing, and profanation of the day of worship: and those against the second table; as disobedience to parents, murder, adultery, theft, bearing false witness, &c. most of which, under the former dispensation, were capital crimes, and punishable with death; and though the punishment of them, at least not all of them, may not be inflicted with that rigour now as then; yet they are punishable in some way or another; which it is the duty of magistrates to take care of.”

(For those interested, Ian Clary has a very good article on Gill relevant here.) See that Gill begins with the same recognition of the testimony of antiquity. The magistrate’s religious concern is one found in the law of nature.

We should quickly add Samuel Pufendorf (Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion in Reference to Civil Society), since he has become an arbiter of the proper trajectory of Protestant Orthodoxy on these questions, by some, at least as to proper interpretation of the revised Westminster Confession. Magistrates are not excluded from “a certain Power and Disposal in Ecclesiastical Affairs,” and this because they are the supreme heads of government from which ecclesiastical persons are not exempt— a shot at the Papacy. Hence, they are nursing fathers, and so on. Taking care of religion is a matter of “Publick Discipline (or which the Reverence due to God Almighty is one main Point).” Pufendorf, like Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero held that religion is the “Strongest Knot for maintaining true Union” in the commonwealth.

“It is therefore a Duty incumbent on Sovereigns, to take not only effectual Care, that Natural Religion be maintain’d, and cultivated among their Subjects; But they have also a sufficient Authority, to Enact such Laws as may enable them, to keep their Subjects from committing any thing, which tends either to the total Destruction, or the Subversion, of the Capital Points of Religion: As if, for instance, any one should attempt to deny publickly the Existency of a God, and his Providence, to set up plurality of Gods; to worship fictitious Gods, or Idols in Gods stead, to spread abroad Blasphemies, or to worship the Devil, enter with him into a Compact, and such like Actions.”

Yes, this requires the sovereign to exercise some manner of theological judgment at the end of the day, and yes, it requires that “a due Uniformity, should be observed” regarding the externals of the church which is necessary to “maintaining a good Order.” Pufendorf, writing at the end of the seventeenth century, is more amenable to toleration, to be sure, but his advice to magistrates to “not be so very anxious on this Account,” because many differences as to form of worship “do not Overturn Religion it self,” is not very different from what Johannes Althusius advises in Politica.

Many more examples could be supplied but that would get tedious. The point has been made. In play in Walker’s thesis is also an arbitrary bifurcation of the Decalogue (i.e., republication of natural duties). This too is ahistorical, and I have yet to hear a good, coherent reason as to why the Ten Commandments can be chopped up this way. We could stack up quotes from High Orthodoxy to refute this modern bifurcation, but we will refrain for now.

To reiterate, it is a dictate of natural law that the true God should be acknowledged and worshiped, and this by the civil authority as a “natural law institution.” It is good and just that the civil authority recognizes the source of its own power and authority. Its pursuit of good and punishment of evil inevitably revert back to that recognition if good is to be promoted and evil punished. Paul gives us no second table ceiling in Romans for this pursuit.

But, perhaps, more importantly for this discussion, the point is that the acknowledgement of the true God is encoded in the civil authority as a sort of metaphysically bound duty. It is simply what the civil authority (government) does (or should) do. No scriptural dictate is necessary to enjoin it so.

Natural and special revelation assume one another, they are interlinked, sharing their source. That natural law dictates that the true God is to be acknowledged and worshiped but does not itself supply full revelation of the true God (e.g., the Trinity and Incarnation) is no retort. It is simply an instance of natural law directing man to further revelation for the full fulfilment of duty. That the magistrate would need to receive further revelation from Scripture and the teachers of Scripture (i.e., the church) to fully perform his duty to God according to natural law is no contradiction. Rather, it signals the necessary relation between what we now call church and state.

That the magistrate requires revelation from outside that which is naturally implanted in and republished to Adam’s progeny to perform all that is required of him is, again, no contradiction. It demonstrates the agreeability and coincidence of the two modes of revelation delivered to us by God. To rigidly bifurcating the modes and means of revelation leads to confusion and a bifurcated life.

Similarly, the minister cannot perform his duties appropriately absent natural revelation, for just as the magistrate does not care for hogs, to invoke Richard Hooker, neither does the minister care for disembodied spirits. Understanding this is part of being Protestant, even non-conformist Protestant. None of this requires answering the question of what units are in view of redemption (i.e., nations or individuals). That’s irrelevant to the inquiry. The natural law duties for “natural law institutions” include acknowledgement of and care for the true religion of the true God. Let the Spirit do the rest. But we should add with Richard Baxter that God created nations if for nothing else because it glorifies him to have groups, peoples larger than individuals and families worship and honor him. Again, this says nothing about membership therein entailing salvation. It is a matter of duty and proper order imbedded in the thing itself according to God’s design.

To close with more Baxter, speaking for non-conformists:

“We detest their doctrine who debase Kings and magistrates, by saying that they are Governors only of the body, and not of the soul (when it is only souls that are commanded by Laws, and immediately obey), or that it is only the civil peace and bodily prosperity which is the end of the Government of Kings, and not men’s spiritual good and salvation: And so that the King and Magistrates are to be valued as much less than the Clergy, as the concerns of the body are less valuable than the concerns of the soul.”

The ancients knew it. Our Protestant forbears knew it. Will we know it?

Image: Coronation of George IV of England 1821 (National Portrait Gallery).