Benjamin, I am somewhat familiar with Rutherford on Establishmentarianism. He also treats the dual mediatorship of Christ although he seems to affirm the doctrine without the neutral realm which is problematic in DVD. Have you seen David MacKay’s chapter on the move away from the dual mediatorship of Christ amongst the Covenanters in the festshrift for Wayne Spear “Once For All Delivered”?

I have read Sudduth’s book and it is fascinating and he does make some good points about the Reformed use of natural law and the later Reformed move away from that use.

I’d be interested in hearing your opinions of Michael Suddoth’s book on Natural Theology.

I am sure you have a long list of topics for the future – but here is a listener request:
Can you do a show on NCT ? I would appreciate to know WTS faculty thoughts on NCT.

http://www.sogncm.org/pages/events/2012-john-bunyan-conference/

http://www.ptsco.org/index.htm

Of the contributors to this podcast how much/any reading in the Scottish Presbyterian tradition (both Covenanter and otherwise) have y’all done on this issue? There seems to be a real unfamiliarity with what is meant in that tradition by “Establishment” and what that means for Church/State relations.

That particular tradition and writings by Rutherford, Symington, Bannerman, etc. seem to be the 1,000lb white elephant in these discussions.

“Even though we have already confined ‘natural law theory’ to its use as a term that marks off a certain class of ethical theories, we still have a confusing variety of meanings to contend with. Some writers use the term with such a broad meaning that any moral theory that is a version of moral realism — that is, any moral theory that holds that some positive moral claims are literally true . . . counts as a natural law view. Some use it so narrowly that no moral theory that is not grounded in a very specific form of Aristotelian teleology could count as a natural law view.”

Merely saying, say, that DVD shows the early Reformed were influenced by Thomas Aquinas on natural law does not provide an explanation for what natural law is–that should be obvious. Murphy himself prefers a Thomistic account of natural law, though primarily as an account of practical rationality, yet even the Thomistic variates branch into many separate forms—virtue theories (Foot), rights theories (maybe Thompson), function theories (such as evolutionary ethics, e.g., Casebeer), and so on—and it is none too clear how to mark these boundaries. Others like John Finnis offer it as a more traditional Thomistic theory (though it is rather incomplete as an ethical theory, compared to Foot e.g.) yet unless one is willing to accept a significant amount of Aristotelian metaphysics it remains off-limits for the Reformed.

And the core problem remains which, in fairness to Dr. K, has been one of the concerns he has pressed time and again without much answer: What is natural law?

DVD does show in his works how the Reformed Scolastics were heavily influenced by a Tomistic conception of Natural Law. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has some great discussions on Thomistic Natural Law, if you want a good online resource to see where the Reformers were drawing off of in their NL constructs.

Kloosterman says (22:00ff) that natural law in the early Reformed tradition was a tool never used “apart from Scripture,” as a means to “invent a distinct morality or moral code.” Unfortunately, this isn’t clear (I’m not sure what “apart from” means, and I am not sure why Kloosterman talks solely in terms of “moral codes”–presumably there are also individual moral norms, reasons, etc.). Besides giving a thorough explanation of natural law, I’d love to see the following questions answered:

1. Does Kloosterman mean to say that the early Reformers thought there was not one moral norm knowable or justifiable apart from appeal to Scripture? In other words, did they think every argument which has a moral norm as its conclusion has to include at least one premise that appeals to or cites Scripture?
2. Further, is Kloosterman (himself or as an interpretation of natural law in the Reformed tradition) saying that our only source of moral normativity is special revelation? What about normativity in general?