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{"id":16204,"date":"2014-06-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1133"},"modified":"2014-06-16T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T00:00:00","slug":"meeting-the-protestant-prejudice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2014\/06\/meeting-the-protestant-prejudice\/","title":{"rendered":"Meeting the Protestant Prejudice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

Snell, though, argues that these Protestant objections don\u2019t touch natural law worked out \u201cfrom the mode of interiority,\u201d which is capable of making ample room for \u201cthe effects of sin on intellect and will, the role of grace, the importance of community, history (including salvation history), and the centrality of the Gospel.\u201d For Protestants to continue to attack natural law theory as if they were refuting \u201cnatural law as interiority<\/em>\u201d is to engage in straw-manning (12-13).<\/p>\n

Snell gives full weight to the standard objections. Summarizing Hauwerwas\u2019s critique of natural law, he notes that it is seen as forgetting or minimizing \u201cthe unique ethic of the church\u201d and therefore given to \u201ccultural assimilation and captivity.\u201d Rather than emphasizing \u201cthe practices of the Christian community with their logic in the form of Christ, the prevailing, \u2018neutral\u2019 norms of consensus govern action, but since the prevailing norms are unfaithful, fallen, and hostile powers and dominions, such consensus is a form of capitulation and even idolatrous collaboration\u201d (58). Even when natural law theory begins from creation and Trinitarian foundations, it ends up turning nature into \u201ca static, a-historical given,\u201d that resembles the \u201cmythos <\/em>perpetuated on the Church by Enlightenment Liberalism\u201d (59).<\/p>\n

To take one standard objection: Snell argues that natural law in the mode of interiority avoids minimizing sin because it starts from \u201cconcrete subjects and concrete operations\u201d (146). In fact, \u201cinteriority not only makes the noetic effects [of sin] non-abstract, but radicalizes its effects. A good many proponents of the noetic effects of sin confine it to an impairment of our knowledge of God while remaining remarkable sanguine about ordinary knowledge. Interiority allows the totality of depravity in a way that a surprising number of adherents of total depravity do not!\u201d (147; in a footnote, he refers to \u201cReformed Epistemology\u201d).\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is still a natural law position because it assumes that there is an \u201cimmanent law contained in the structures of consciousness\u201d that is not followed because of deranged desires and a mis-directed disposition (141). In place of knowledge and order, humans fall into \u201cinterruptions and irrationalities, refusals and intelligibility\u201d (141).<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not convinced that natural law is a good way to describe what Snell is describing, but when a natural lawyer starts talking about the noetic effects of sin and depravity, even Prejudiced Protestants should take note.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"