Journal of Christian Legal Thought

Fall 2013

THE LORD JESUS AND NATURAL LAW: UNITED FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN JURISPRUDENCE? By Eric Enlow

ontemporary U.S. law is sunk in the consequences of idolatry. (Rom. 1: 25-6) It has removed the recognition of God from public life, tyrannically abetted violence against the unborn, desecrated marriage, and curtailed religious liberty. Most recently, it has set up an idol of human autonomous freedom as a fundamental principle of its jurisprudence, and slandered dissenting Christian lawmakers as malicious, motivated by “a desire to harm.”1 Rebelliously choosing to be ruled by man not God, U.S. jurists have ensured national slavery. (1 Sam 8:7, 17) A united Christian jurisprudence is needed today to prepare Christians lawyers either to restore liberty to the nation or to witness to Jesus before U.S. rulers. In fact, such a united and uniting Christian jurisprudence is always needed. The Christian has always struggled against “the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world” (Eph 6:12). The nations have always encouraged Christians to join them in the “futility of their thinking … darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God.” (Eph 4:17-8) But “in [their] hearts,” Christians are “to set apart Christ as Lord.” (1Pe 3:15) Thankfully, Jesus has given grace to Christian teachers, among them the signatories of “Evangelicals and Catholics Together on Law: The Lord of Heaven and Earth” (ECTL), to “prepare God’s people for works of service … until all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God.” (Eph 4:7-13) By Jesus’ grace, they have begun to prepare Christian lawyers to unite together and to unite their own hearts in the Lord Jesus by detailing the comprehensive ways that Christians can act in reliance on Jesus in law. But this work is not done. For the Christian preparing his heart for legal action, ECTL is split into two parts, two separate accounts of law, which are not equally focused on the knowledge of the Son of God. The differences between these parts send the Christian lawyer in different directions. The first, longest and best part details how Christians can depend on Jesus in legal action and follow Him in both official and private capacities. It is a clear, significant proclamation of Jesus’ Lordship over law, pure “foolishness” in the best sense.

(1 Cor. 1:18-21) But its clarity is confused by the last part, which endorses a natural-law theory focused on human reasoning; it is also clear but, depending on one’s perspective, perhaps too “wise.” In method and subject, the parts are inevitably divided because Jesus’ Lordship is a matter of faith taught by Scripture, and natural law a matter of reason taught by Western Christendom’s Greco-Roman legal tradition. But in the heart of the believer trying to discern how to orient himself to the law—how he will faithfully represent clients, write laws, judge cases, obey the law for Jesus Christ—these merely conceptual differences appear even greater. Trusting in Jesus as the Lord who has shown us how to comport ourselves toward law requires a total attitude of reliance, filled with prayer for Jesus’ grace; this appeal to the heart leads in a different direction than the last section’s call to rely on one’s own practical reasoning about natural law. The less important difference in formal method between the parts is related to the ecclesial differences among the signatories. The relation between Scripture and tradition divides Roman Catholicism and the Reformation, as does the relation between faith and reason. Like the cultural differences between Jerusalem and Athens, or Geneva and Rome, the conceptual and practical divisions between approaches to law based on Biblical faith in Jesus alone and accounts based on the scholastic tradition of Hellenic-Christian syncretism are wide. ECTL does not really attempt to overcome these basic divides. This is no criticism of the signatories, though it confuses ECTL; to overcome them fully would require resolving the contending principles of Roman Catholicism and the Reformation. Setting aside issues that would threaten to divide its signatories, ECTL makes no effort to connect its Scriptural account of what Jesus’ Lordship means for the Christian lawyer with its traditional account of natural law. It simply discusses what Jesus means for the law in the first parts, citing regularly to Scripture, and then it discusses what natural law means in the last, referring regularly to tradition. Natural law does not appear in the first part and Jesus does not appear in the last. The individual Christian, however, cannot approach 16