It was interesting to find this quote in Ruben Alvarado’s book, “The Debate that changed the West: Grotius vs. Althusius.” I found it very telling. When men like Cornelius Van Til inveighed against natural law, it was this interpretation of natural law that they fought against. I find this reason enough to give Van Tillians some charity when they fight against the new natural law.

“Another fundamental change takes place in Grotius’ definition of natural law. Recall that in the De Jure Praedae Grotius equated the natural law simply with the will of God. In the De Jure Belli et Pacis, however, he makes the natural law totally independent of God’s will; in fact, God’s will becomes a subset of law, which cannot contradict he natural law. He specifically states that his ideas about natural justice and law would not be different even if God did not exist, which he however hurriedly affirms is an idea which involves the gravest sin in entertaining. Now this expression, one of the most famous in the whole work, is not new to him but was often repeated by natural law philosophers and theologians to emphasize the immutability of natural law. However, because Grotius infuses the natural law with an entirely different content, this kind of affirmation makes his teaching revolutionary: natural law becomes totally divorced from the will of God.

Instead, God’s will is another only secondary source of law, distinct from the natural law. Grotius adds some further qualifications concerning the relation of the will fo god to natural law. Reason teaches us to obey it unconditionally; the natural law can be considered the creation of god in the sense that God willed that it be planted in our hearts; in divine law God makes the properties of natural law better visible and more easily executable. Biblical history also confirms the doctrine of the inborn desire for community, by showing that we all spring form the same forefathers, and that parents are to be upheld with special honor and given special (non-absolute) obedience.”

Among the reformed there has been a resurgence of support for natural law theory. This is good. I believe it provides another pillar to strengthen our overall understanding of the world around us. It also provides a useful polemic against those who seek to champion a twisting and warping of nature through homosexuality and other perversities. But I have some qualifications to my support. What I don’t see is the careful work developing a theological language around that tradition that guards us against past failures of the natural law tradition.

Natural Law is a wide-ranging phrase that suggests all sorts of traditions and meanings. It can be a bit of a wax nose in the hands of a theologian who wants to defend his beliefs according to natural law. It’s easy to point out the historical failings of the Van Tillian tradition. He read a form of Grotius’ natural law into the natural law tradition of the reformed. He rejected natural law as Grotius’ natural law. Let’s clarify what he was fighting against. Van Til made errors in his reading of history, but he was no fool. Let us carefully distinguish Christian natural law from other forms of natural law. That likely means that we can’t take the natural law structures of the 16th-century reformers verbatim. We have work to do.