Natural Law And The Noetic Effects Of Sin: The Faculty Of Reason In Francis Turretin’s Theological Anthropology

By Stephen J. Grabill

[Stephen Grabill is Executive Editor of Journal of Markets and Morality and Research Scholar in Theology at the Acton Institute’s Center for Academic Research in Grand Rapids, Mich. This article was originally presented at the conference “Written on the Heart: The Tradition of Natural Law,” Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich., 13–15 May 2004.]

I. Present State of the Question

Scholarship on Reformed orthodoxy, largely rehearsing the generalizations and conclusions of such nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German historians and theologians as Alexander Schweizer, Heinrich Heppe, Paul Althaus, and Hans Emil Weber, has often criticized the Protestant theological systems of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for being “rationalistic.”[1] Rationalism, as a term of diminution applied to those systems, generally signifies that reason functions either as the foundation upon which theological doctrines are built or as the first principle by which they are authenticated. In this view, the supposedly inherent rationalism of the scholastic method brought about a distortion of the Reformers’ doctrine.

In his frequently cited study of the seventeenth-century Reformed theologian Moyses Amyraut, Brian Armstrong claimed that Protestant scholasticism employed “reason in religious matters, so that reason assumes at least equal standing with faith in theology, thus jettisoning some of the authority of revelation.”[2] Walter Kickel described Theodore Beza as having masterminded the “substitution of a rational system of final causation for Christocentrism.”[3] Otto Grundler advanced the argument that the concept of causality was not only the “key” but also the “unifying principle” of Jerome Zanchi’s theology: “In the theology of Zanchi, at the very point of transition from Reformation to Orthodoxy, the spirit of medieval Scholasticism has thus begun to replace that of the Reformers at a point where it counted most. To the extent to which—under the influence of the Thomistic-Aristotelian tradition—the christocentric orientation of Calvin’s thinking shifted toward a metaphysics of causality in the thought of his successors, Reformed theology ceased to be a theology of revelation.”[4] Such an approach is also identifiable in Alan Clifford’s contention that John Owen’s theology “was governed more by Aristotelian than by Scriptural considerations. In his discussion of the atonement and justification, his resort to Aristotle only confused the issue by creating self-contradictory conceptual illusions.”[5]

Jack Rogers and Donald McKim have proposed a similar assessment of Francis Turretin’s theology (1623–1687), a premier seventeenth-century Reformed scholastic theologian. In particular, they assert that there is an inherent connection between scholasticism, Aristotelianism, and rationalism that generally characterizes Turretin’s thought, on the one hand, and that the very presence of these characteristics point to significant discontinuities between his intellectual program and that of the Reformers, on the other hand.[6] As research into the relationship between the Reformers and post-Reformation orthodoxy has blossomed over the past thirty years, however, the former consensus of Protestant scholastic theology as discontinuous with the Reformation has been overturned in the secondary literature.[7] The adjectives scholastic and rationalistic, once employed pejoratively to describe post-Reformation theological systems, were thought to indicate “a particular philosophy or as engendering a particular philosophical or theological result. That result, moreover, has been dubbed ‘Aristotelian’ and, by more than one writer, has been viewed as a form of rationalism that places reason prior to faith and, therefore, philosophy prior to Scripture in the list of criteria or principia for theology”[8] The fundamental insight of the new scholarship, in Trueman’s and Clark’s words, is simply that “to describe a theology as scholastic is to make a statement about its method not its content.”[9]

Applying the conclusions of the older German scholarship to the Protestant appropriation of the natural-law tradition, it is apparent that Karl Barth in the 1934 disputation with Emil Brunner interpreted the scholastic, Aristotelian, and Thomistic antecedents of natural-law doctrine as prima facie evidence of its rationalism.[10] Barth blamed the Protestant scholastics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for turning “Calvin into a kind of Jean-Alphonse Turrettini,”[11] the only child of Francis Turretin to survive infancy and who later began to dismantle key aspects of Genevan orthodoxy that his father had fought hard to establish.[12] Following the example of their mentor, Barthian scholars have consistently attempted to portray “pre-Enlightenment Reformed theology, particularly that of John Calvin, as fundamentally a proto-Barthian movement in the history of the church.”[13]

A more adequate definition of scholasticism, which rescues the term from its merely pejorative meaning, is “the technical and logical approach to theology as a discipline characteristic of theological systems from the late twelfth through the seventeenth century. .. [that] is not necessarily allied to any particular philosophical perspective nor. .. represented by] a systematic attachment to or concentration upon any particular doctrine or concept as a key to theological system.”[14] Recent scholarship has become increasingly more aware of the continuities—as well as the discontinuities—the Reformers and their successors maintained with the doctrinal and philosophical formulations of the patristic and medieval eras in Christian theology. In assessing doctrinal developments between these eras and Protestant orthodoxy, the methodological challenge “is to examine the course of development, to study the reasons for change, assess the context of each document, and then to make judgments concerning continuity and discontinuity in the light of something more than a facile contrast or juxtaposition.”[15]

Despite the fact that the Reformers and Protestant orthodox theologians carried over the natural-law tradition as a noncontroversial legacy of “catholic” Christianity as McNeill and others have argued,[16] many contemporary Protestant theologians and ethicists remain stubbornly suspicious of it as a species of Roman Catholic moral theology. Barth’s polemic against natural law was effective in persuading many twentieth-century theologians that the orthodox Protestant theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had unwarrantably converted the Reformers’ pastorally oriented and exegetically based ethics into the abstract, scholastic natural-law systems of the later Middle Ages. Barth’s successful rhetorical strategy had the cumulative effect of undermining the natural-law tradition in Reformed theological ethics[17] and in obscuring what use the Reformers—not to mention their contemporaries and successors—had actually made of natural law.

The decline of Reformed natural-law ethics in the twentieth century is integrally tied to the theological argument, archetypally expressed in Barth’s denunciation of natural theology that the fall has disordered the faculty of reason to such an extent that apart from Christ it is impossible to obtain any genuine knowledge of God—an anthropological assumption that he claimed was implicit in Calvin’s teaching on the noetic “incapacity of the natural man.”[18] The argument here, however, is that a close examination of Francis Turretin’s theology reveals quite a different understanding of the faculty of reason and the lex naturalis from the one that Barth and the older German scholarship presents. According to Turretin, the post-lapsarian faculty of reason serves theology in a subordinate role as a reliable—although fallible—instrument that yields useful knowledge of the first principles of morality drawn from natural revelation. Just as Reformed orthodoxy inherited the natural-law tradition it received from the Reformers, so too did it teach that the “natural light” left to the human mind functioned competently in its proper sphere.

II. The Faculty of Reason in Turretin’s Theological Anthropology

Before examining Turretin’s definition of reason and the role it serves in theology, it is important to understand the conceptual milieu in which he lived. Turretin thought that the orthodox use of reason in theology must avoid two different but equally destructive extremes:

The orthodox occupy a middle ground. They do not confound theology with sound philosophy as the parts of a whole; nor do they set them against each other as contraries, but subordinate and compound them as subordinates which are not at variance with, but mutually assist each other. Philo Judaeus and, after him, the fathers appropriately illustrated this by the allegory of Sarah and Hagar—the mistress and servant. Theology rules over philosophy, and this latter acts as a handmaid to and subserves the former. They acknowledge that it has many and various uses in theology which must be accurately distinguished from its abuses.[19]

His view of the orthodox via media led him to criticize those who, on the one hand, “err on the side of excess” by confounding philosophy with theology and those who, on the other, “sin in defect” by holding “that philosophy is opposed to theology and should therefore be altogether separated from it, not only as useless, but also as positively hurtful” (1.13.1).

Turretin identifies those who err on the side of excess as the Socinians and Arminians of the present day but also church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, and the late medieval scholastics, “whose system is philosophical rather than theological since it depends more upon the reasonings of Aristotle and other philosophers than upon the testimonies of the prophets and apostles” (1.13.1). The danger of this error, particularly in the case of the Socinians, was that reason and philosophy were made into the foundation of faith and the primary interpreters of Scripture. Among those who err on the side of defect, Turretin includes “the fanatics and enthusiasts of former ages” and the “Anabaptists and Weigelians of the present day.” The fundamental error here consists, as Rehnman comments,

in the entire exclusion of the judgment of contradiction in matters of faith and in a tendency to misrepresent the use of reason.. .. Although Reformed theologians recognized that reason, which educes consequences, is fallible, it is a fallacy of accident to argue that it is therefore always fallible. There are circumstances in which it does not apply, and the use of consequences is only allowed to a sound and rightly constituted intellect that is freed from the prejudices that stand in the way of right thinking.[20]

Unlike most contemporary theological analyses of reason, Turretin not only provides a definition of the faculty but also describes several of its distinct usages. Human reason, subjectively defined, is “that faculty of the rational soul by which man understands and judges between intelligible things presented to him (natural and supernatural, divine and human)” (1.8.1). That is, reason is that aspect of the human mind concerned with understanding tangible and intangible realities. Objectively defined, however, reason is the “natural light both externally presented and internally impressed upon the mind by which reason is disposed to the forming of certain conceptions and the eliciting of conclusions concerning God and divine things” (1.8.1). It is from this view of reason that Turretin’s numerous references to “common notions,” “ anticipations,” and “prolepsis” should be understood. In more conventional theological usage, reason can be viewed through a redemptive-historical lens: “either as sound and whole before the fall or as corrupt and blind after it” (1.8.1). Moreover, reason may be considered either in the concrete or in the abstract. “Reason as corrupt and in the concrete may be at variance with theology, but not reason as sound and in the abstract (which possibly may be ignorant of mysteries and may not teach them, but must not therefore be considered as denying them)” (1.9.10). Finally, reason may be “enlightened by the Holy Spirit through the word,” and thus able to judge from the standpoint of the word, using the rules of good and necessary consequence, “how the parts of a doctrine cohere, and what may or may not follow from them” (1.10.3, 5).

While Turretin takes great care to show that his understanding of reason does not exalt itself above Scripture—its principium cognoscendi—the principal concern here turns on the facility with which the post-lapsarian faculty of reason serves theology. As might be surmised, the question of the role of reason in theology raises the logically prior one of the extent of the noetic effects of the fall. Examining Turretin’s view of faith and reason, nature and grace, is an effective way to grasp his understanding of the effects of the fall on the faculty of reason.

Due recognition must be made, in the first place, between an “instrument of faith” and “the foundation of faith.” “ It is one thing to introduce something to be believed and another to educe what may be understood and explained from the words; not by forcing a sense on a passage, but by unfolding that which seems involved. Reason is the instrument which the believer uses, but it is not the foundation and principle upon which faith rests” (1.8.7). Thus, applying this distinction to the question of how theology and reason relate, Turretin distinguishes between what he calls “a ministerial and organic relation” and “a principal and despotic relation.” “ Reason holds the former relation to theology, not the latter,” he explains. “It is the Hagar (the bondmaid which should be in subjection to Scripture); not the Sarah (the mistress which presides over Scripture)” (1.8.6). One aspect of reason’s instrumental nature consists in its operation of comparing “the things proposed to be believed with the sacred Scriptures, the inflexible rule of truth” (1.8.6; cf 1.8.3). Faith employs reason but is not built upon it. “[Faith] uses [reason] as an instrument of application and mode of knowledge, but is not built upon it as a foundation and rule of things to be believed” (1.12.15).

Second, when a proper understanding of the faculty’s nature and boundaries is preserved, Turretin shows that it is possible for harmony to obtain between faith and reason, nature and grace, natural and supernatural revelation. He expresses the character of that relationship in various aphorisms: “Light is not contrary to light” (1.8.21; 1.13.13). “Grace does not destroy nature, but makes it perfect” (1.9.15; 1.13.3). “Truth is not at variance with truth” (1.13.13). “Supernatural revelation [does not] abrogate the natural, but makes it sure” (1.13.3). Turretin provides an ultimate explanation for why the post-lapsarian prospect still exists for a harmonious relationship to obtain between the realms of the natural and the supernatural: “Although every truth cannot be demonstrated by reason (the boundaries of truth being much more widely extended than those of reason), yet no lie against the truth can be sheltered under the protection of true reason, nor can one truth be destroyed by another (although one may transcend and surpass the other) because whatever the one may be—whether below, according to or above reason, and apprehended by the senses, the intellect or faith—it has come from no other source than God, the parent of truth” (1.13.3; 1.13.5, 7, 10–14). Rehnman describes Turretin’s view of reason as a form of “modified Thomism.”[21]

Turretin, furthermore, specifies three distinct uses and limitations for reason in matters pertaining to faith. First, use of the judgment of contradiction is only permitted to those who have been “restored and enlightened by the Holy Spirit” (1.10.1). As will be seen later on, Turretin’s stricture here not only indicates a positive use of regenerate natural theology but also simultaneously acknowledges the noetic effects of the fall. Second, the principles from which restored reason forms its judgments “are axioms not known by nature or founded upon human authority, but given in the Scriptures” (1.10.1). The ultimate rational standard for a theological proposition is not whether it accords with “corrupted and blind reason,” “ ratiocination,” or “human concepts,” (1.8.19, 21) but that it conforms to the rule of Scripture through good and necessary consequence (1.8.11–17). “The proper rule of things to be believed and disbelieved is not the apprehension of their possibility or impossibility, but the Word of God. Nor are those things only possible to God which seem so to men, for he can do above all that we can think (Eph. 3:20; Mt. 19:26), and it would be impious for a finite mind to circumscribe within narrow limits the infinite power of God” (1.8.20). Third, the rule of just consequence as impressed upon the mind by God is yet another means through which reason can be applied to matters of faith. “This rule is not the rule of the truth itself (which is the word of God alone and the first normal truth), but only the rule of consequence by the assistance of which we may know and discern with greater certainty what follows from a truth and what does not” (1.10.1). Rehnman summarizes Turretin’s position as follows: “The effect of the fall upon reason was ethical rather than ontic in character. Constitutionally or structurally man remains what he was before the fall, but there is a definite directional, ethical difference in opposition to God.”[22]

Before delving into Turretin’s view of natural revelation and regenerate natural theology, it is necessary to address briefly the degree to which he thought post-lapsarian reason yielded reliable—although fallible—knowledge of first principles drawn from natural revelation. While reason post-lapsum “is very dark,” he concedes that “some rays of natural light and certain first principles” still remain in it. “If this were not the case, there could be no science, nor art, nor certainty in the nature of things” (1.9.5). For him, the central question is not whether the intellect’s natural capacity of understanding can still extrapolate truths pertaining either to God or morality but whether it distinguishes well enough between the first principles of nature (which are known in themselves) from the conclusions that are deduced from those principles. The first principles of nature are “true and sure,” whereas the conclusions are “obscure, often erroneous and fallible” (1.8.21). Yet, Turretin even nuances the latter point. While the intellect’s deduction of consequences from first principles is certainly fallible, it does not follow that the consequences themselves are false and uncertain:

A power which is of itself and always fallible in every exercise cannot give foundation to infallible certainty. But such is not the intellect because it is fallible not in itself but accidentally; nor in all, but only in some things.. .. For the power of fallibility is not necessarily connected with each act. Nay it can by the use of legitimate means be hindered from flowing into the act. Therefore as the senses must be freed from all obstacles inhibiting their certainty (existing either in the object, the medium or the organ), so the intellect must be freed from the prejudices which stand in the way of right reason, and then it will not go wrong. (1.12.13)

Such is the case, according to Turretin, only for the sound and rightly constituted intellect.

III. The Function of Natural Revelation and the Use of Regenerate Natural Theology in Turretin’s System

Although commentators have paid nominal attention to Turretin’s prolegomena and doctrine of God, no real interest has been taken yet in his ethics. This is a striking oversight not only because his treatment of natural law is broadly affirmative of the realist natural-law tradition[23] (viz., the Thomist and Scotist trajectories), but also because his formulation of natural-law doctrine is systematic and integrated seamlessly with the adjacent doctrines of natural revelation and natural theology. The objective of this section and the next is to lay out the doctrinal parameters of Turretin’s understanding of natural revelation and natural law. Approaching our task in this manner will make apparent how he arranges the relations between those doctrines and will also enable us to ascertain continuities and discontinuities between his formulation of natural law in relation to the principal philosophical schools of the late medieval era.

Like his orthodox predecessors, Turretin affirms unequivocally that natural revelation is essential to supernatural theology; yet he is also clear that it has boundaries that circumscribe its limited sphere of usefulness. “It is one thing to allow some knowledge of God as Creator and preserver however imperfect, corrupt, and obscure; another to have a full, entire, and clear knowledge of God as Redeemer and of the lawful worship due to him. Natural theology has the former in that which may be known of God. Revelation alone has the latter in the faith that is gained only from the word” (1.4.6). After the fall, salvation depends upon the “the revealed Word of the Law and the Gospel” (1.4.2). The issue for Turretin, then, is not the mere existence of a true natural knowledge of God as it is for Barth and many modern theologians: “We may admit, indeed, some sort of natural theology arising from the light of nature, upon which supernatural theology may be built—for example, that God exists, that God is to be worshipped” (1.4.3). Rather, it is that such knowledge cannot provide adequate or proper foundations for true religion—even if it does, like philosophy, perform a valuable ancillary role in supernatural theology.

Turretin’s regenerate natural theology, which builds upon his understanding of the natural human faculties developed elsewhere in the system, exhibits a “pedagogical or legal use of natural theology as described by [Stephen] Charnock and [a general parallelism of sorts] with the Reformed doctrine of the threefold use of the Law”[24] In Turretin’s case, as Muller shows, the parallelism certainly obtains between his use of pagan natural theology and the preevangelical, pedagogical use of the law (the so-called usus elenchticus sivepaedagogicus), but a “less accurate parallel” may also exist between his regenerate natural theology and the postevangelical, normative use of the law (the so-called tertius usus legis).[25] However, even if the latter parallel can be sustained, there is no evidence to suggest “that the Reformed orthodox recognition of the parallel between natural law and the Decalogue led to a view of pagan natural theology (theologia falsa) as a kind of praeparatio evangelica: from Musculus to Polanus and Alsted, to Du Moulin, Charnock, Turretin, and Heidegger, this form of natural theology carries with it only the elenctical or condemnatory function of the Law, not the full usus paedagogicus.”[26] Regenerate natural theology only leaves men without excuse; it offers no soteriologically useful content for either the regenerate or the unregenerate alike. Yet, unlike Barth, even after acknowledging the inherent limitations of natural revelation and natural theology, Turretin avers: “Although the human understanding is very dark, yet there still remains in it some rays of natural light and certain first principles, the truth of which is unquestionable.. .. These first principles are true not only in nature, but also in grace and the mysteries of faith. Faith, so far from destroying, on the contrary, borrows them from reason and uses them to strengthen its own doctrines” (1.9.5).

IV Natural Law and the Natural Right of God in Turretin’s System

Based on the preceding analysis, it is now possible to show how Turretin’s formulation of natural-law doctrine is part of a larger doctrinal complex, on the one hand, and how his understanding of natural law is broadly affirmative of the realist natural-law tradition, on the other. As might be expected, he discusses the origin, foundation, and nature of natural law under topic eleven (“The Law of God”) in the first and second questions. His objective in the first question is to affirm the existence of a natural law and to clarify how it differs from the law of Moses, while in the second question it is to specify the sense in which moral precepts are of natural and indispensable right. Turretin’s doctrine of natural law is not only systematically arranged (and compactly set forth) but also developed as an apologetic for the indispensability of the moral law over against the excesses associated with some late medieval nominalist doctrines of natural law. The argument is that—relative to the issues of law and right in topic eleven, and, particularly, the indispensability of the precepts— Turretin’s position seems to reflect a dual via antiqua and Scotist accent; however, on the more fundamental issues of the liberty of the divine will (cf 3.14, 15, 17, 18) and the operation of the divine power (cf. 3.21) addressed in the locus de Deo, he seems to adopt the philosophical framework of Scotus’s “synchronic contingency” model.[27] The first question of topic eleven starts off by defining the nature of law and by indicating its multiple uses in theology.

Turretin begins his treatment of the law by enumerating three basic uses of the lex moralis, which, as a starting point, is a fairly standard way of addressing the topic in both Lutheran and Reformed scholastic systems. The law has three principal uses in theology. First, it provides direction for life as “a perfect rule of God’s right over man and of man’s duty toward God.” Second, it provides knowledge of sin because sin’s heinousness is ascertained “from no other source than the law” (Rom 3:20). Third, it provides preparation for grace in that “from the declaration of man’s sin and misery, the necessity of saving grace may be unfolded and a desire for it excited in us” (Gal 3:24) (11.1.1). Like Jerome Zanchi, Turretin anticipates a discussion of law in general by analyzing the etymology of the word. The Hebrews employ the word torah for law, which, in the Hiphel, means “to teach” because by it all are reminded of their duty. The Greeks call it nomos (from nemein), which denotes both “to rule” and “to distribute” because by it all ought to be governed and one’s due rendered. The Latins either derive it from legendo because, as Cicero observes, it is usually read when enacted so that it may become known to all or is exposed on public tablets to be read; or inasmuch as legere is used for deligere because it contains a choice of things to be done or avoided; or finally from ligando (according to Thomas Aquinas and most of the scholastics after him), because it binds people as it were by a chain. In this latter sense, remarks Turretin, laws are frequently referred to as bonds in Scripture (Ps 2:3; Jer 5:5) (11.1.2).

Scripture itself, moreover, refers to law in different ways. At times, the word law is used broadly to signify either the “whole word of God” (Ps 1:2; 19:7–8), the Pentateuch (Luke 24:44; Rom 3:21), the old covenant as opposed to the new covenant (Heb 7:12; John 1:17), the covenant of works versus the covenant of grace (Rom 6:14), or, most important for us, as “the rule of things to be done and avoided, which God has prescribed to rational creatures under the sanction of rewards and punishments” (11.1.3).

These different senses of law can be categorized into natural and positive species, which, as Turretin contends, parallel the twofold right of God. “As the right of God is twofold (one natural, founded in the perfectly just and holy nature of God; the other positive, depending on the will of God alone in which he also shows his own liberty), so there is a positive law of God built on the free and positive right of God (with respect to which things are then good because God commands them)” (11.1.4). Positive law is law that God is free to institute, to withhold, or to suspend as he sees fit. Scriptural examples of positive law are Old Testament restrictions relating to food, cult, and ceremony, in which God freely commands something to be done or avoided because it suits his purpose and not because the law pertains to moral goodness or evil per se. Natural law, however, prescribes indispensable duties to human beings that must be performed by all, always, and everywhere. Turretin describes this species of law as follows: “There is another (natural) founded on the natural right of God, with regard to which things are not called just because they are commanded, but are commanded because they were just and good antecedently to the command of God (being founded on the very holiness and wisdom of God)” (11.1.4). The Decalogue (i.e., the lex moralis) and the natural law, in Turretin’s system, refer to substantially the same law. “The moral law is the same as to substance with the natural, which is immutable and founded upon the rational nature; both because the sum of the law. .. is impressed upon man by nature and because all its precepts are derived from the light of nature and nothing is found in them which is not taught by sound reason; nothing which does not pertain to all nations in every age; nothing which it is not necessary for human nature to follow in order to attain its end” (11.2.17).

It is possible, moreover, to distinguish between two senses of natural law: a broad and a specific sense. The broad sense refers to what Aquinas called eternal law whose jurisdiction extended to governance of the physical world: inanimate objects, plants, animals, and human society. Turretin considers the broad sense to be an improper use of the term natural law because it “denotes nothing else than the most wise government of the providence of God over creatures and the most efficacious direction to their ends” (11.1.5). Yet, like Aquinas but unlike Scotus, Turretin holds that “the moral law (which is the pattern of God’s image in man)” corresponds with “the eternal and archetypal law in God, since it is its copy and shadow (aposkimation), in which he has manifested his justice and holiness” (11.2.16). Taken in its strict and proper sense, therefore, natural law refers to “the practical rule of moral duties to which human beings are bound by nature” (11.1.5). Concerning the specific sense, Turretin writes, “It is here inquired whether there is such a natural law of God obtaining among all (as the rule of justice and injustice) antecedently to the positive laws of men; or whether justice and virtue depend upon man’s will alone and spring from the consent of human society and are to be measured by each one’s own utility” (11.1.5). According to him, Reformed orthodoxy affirms the former; libertines such as Hobbes the latter.

The orthodox position is that natural law arises from God having stamped on the conscience the moral obligation to do that which is good and avoid what is evil (i.e., to use Thomistic terminology, the conscience has been stamped with per se nota knowledge of the first principle of practical reason). According to Turretin, Reformed orthodoxy affirms “that there is a natural law, not arising from a voluntary contract or law of society, but from a divine obligation being impressed by God upon the conscience of man in his very creation, on which the difference between right and wrong is founded and which contains the practical principles of immovable truth (such as ‘God should be worshipped,’ ‘parents honored,’ ‘we should live virtuously’ ‘injure no one,’ ‘do to others what we would wish them to do to us’ and the like)” (11.1.7).28 So much of the innate knowledge of first principles remains after the fall that no person can escape its force. But this does not negate the epistemological reality that natural knowledge of morality has been, to some extent, corrupted and obscured by sin. Before engaging in a discussion of natural law’s origin and foundation, Turretin clarifies precisely what orthodoxy understood by the adjective natural in natural law: “Now they wish this law to be called natural, not because it has its origin from bare nature (since it depends upon God the supreme lawgiver), but because it becomes known from the aspect of creatures and of the relation of man to God, and the knowledge of it is impressed upon the mind by nature, not acquired by tradition or instruction” (11.1.7).

According to Turretin, natural law originates from the right of nature. To avoid misinterpretation of what the phrase right of nature means, however, he distinguishes his usage from the more customary one in the Corpus Iuris Civilis(1) and in Justinian’s Institutions (1.2), where it is defined as “that which nature teaches all animals.” The semantic range of the phrase is circumscribed in Turretin’s usage to that which pertains only to rational creatures. For this reason, then, he rejects the broader interpretation of the right of nature that historically included the law of nations (common law that all nations use) and the civil law (particular laws that each state or community determines for itself). The right of nature is thus “rightly described by common practical notions, or the light and dictation of conscience (which God has engraven by nature upon every individual, to distinguish between virtue and vice, and to know the things to be avoided and the things to be done)” (11.1.10).

Of the “common practical notions,” some are primary (which he calls principles) and others are secondary (called conclusions). Principles, in Turretin’s schema, are indispensable, apprehended immediately, oriented to the common good, and with the assistance of reason enable valid conclusions to be drawn. Conclusions always have the end of the common good in view, and may be “either more near, immediate and (as they say) of the first dictation of nature (which are proximately gathered from the principles and readily come into knowledge); or mediate and more remote (which by remoter consequence and with greater difficulty are deduced from the principles)” (11.1.11). Primary notions do not vary but secondary notions display widespread variation in their application. While mediate and remoter conclusions more easily succumb to the corrupting effects of sin, the fundamental nature of moral knowledge and obligation is still “the same among all, as to first principles and the immediate conclusions thence deduced” (11.1.11). “Although various practical notions have been obscured after sin and for a time even obliterated, it does not follow either that they were entirely extinguished or that they never existed at all. For the commonest principle (that good should be done and evil avoided) is unshaken in all, although in the particular conclusions and in the determinations of it good men may often err because vice deceives us under the appearance and shadow of virtue” (11.1.20).

Yet, it still remains to be seen on what foundation the right of nature rests. According to Turretin, the right of nature rests on two principal foundations: (1) the nature of God, the Creator, and (2) the condition of rational creatures themselves. In the first instance, the right of nature is thought to rest ultimately on the divine being because God, on the basis of his holiness, prescribes duties to his creatures that proceed directly from his nature. In the second instance, the right of nature is thought to rest proximately on rational creatures who, “on account of their necessary dependence upon God in the genus of morals, no less than in the genus of being, are bound to perform or avoid those things that sound reason and the dictates of conscience enjoin upon them to do or avoid” (11.1.9).

Before turning attention to the indispensability of the moral law, which is addressed in the second question of topic eleven, it is important to be clear on how Turretin understands the relationship between the lex naturalis and the lex divina. How does natural law agree with or differ from the moral law as expressed in the Decalogue? “It agrees as to substance and with regard to principles, but differs as to accidents and with regard to conclusions” (11.1.22; cf. 11.2.17). Substantively, both types of law prescribe the same duties toward God and neighbor and thus share the same moral content. The principal accidental difference between them pertains to the mode of delivery. “In the moral law, these duties are clearly, distinctly, and fully declared; while in the natural law they are obscurely and imperfectly declared both because many intimations have been lost and obliterated by sin and because it has been variously corrupted by the vanity and wickedness of men (Rom. 1:20–22)” (11.1.22). The natural law is written on the heart, is universal in scope, and contains only primary or secondary moral propositions, whereas the moral law is written on stony tablets, is limited to those called by the word, and contains both moral and ceremonial propositions. After the fall, God deemed it necessary to promulgate natural law in written form because, as Turretin exclaims, “So great was the blindness of mind, such the perversity of will and disturbance of the affections that only remains of this law [i.e., natural law] survived in the hearts of all (like rubbed pictures of the same, which on that account ought to be retouched by the voice and hand of God as by a new brush)” (11.1.23).

Turretin’s treatment of topic eleven’s second question, “Whether the precepts of the Decalogue are of natural and indispensable right?” repudiates the speculative excesses associated with certain late medieval nominalist doctrines of natural law. In a straightforward sense, his polemic against those formulations is merely an expansion of his earlier remarks on the twofold right of God, which, as we saw, established the fundamental categories into which the various species of law were placed. Given this state of affairs, then, it makes sense to take a close look at Turretin’s understanding of the divine right. Analysis of the divine right will illuminate Turretin’s position that the precepts of the moral law (but not of the ceremonial or civil law) are of natural right, and so are necessary (not only hypothetically from the sanction of the divine will, but absolutely on the part of the thing itself), and thus incapable of being dispensed with, not only by human beings but also by God (11.2.9; 11.2.34).

Corresponding with the twofold right of God, Turretin observes in relation to creatures that the divine right pertains either to dominion or government. Dominion is described as “the right of possessing, disposing and using creatures, as a lord or proprietor, who is able to use and enjoy his own property at pleasure” (11.2.4). But government “refers to rational creatures whom [God] governs as ruler and legislator; to whom belong legislation, judgment and execution, so as to have the power of enacting laws, of judging in accordance with them and of carrying out the sentence pronounced” (11.2.4). As with law in general, the divine right of government is divided into natural and positive species, which is then applied to creatures in the following way:

.. . the former [i.e., natural], according to which [God] must prescribe to rational creatures their duties (the opposites of which imply a contradiction because they are not founded simply on the divine will, but on the perfection, eminence, holiness, and rectitude of the divine nature); the latter [i.e., positive], however, according to which he freely and from his mere good pleasure prescribes such duties as he either was able not to prescribe, or the opposites of which antecedently to the open intimation of the divine will, he might have willed and enjoined without any prejudice to his perfection and holiness, and without embarrassing contradiction. (11.2.4)

Therefore, whatever is connected with the nature, perfection, eminence, or holiness of God (such as primary moral precepts) belongs to natural right. However, all those things of which it cannot be said that God was not bound by his nature or in which he could or actually has made some change in the moral obligation (such as the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament) belong to positive right (11.2.5).

Moreover, in addition to the “uncreated” or “primary” natural divine right that is founded on the very nature and holiness of God and described in the previous paragraph, Turretin now introduces what he calls a “created” or “secondary” natural divine right that is founded on the nature of things—”according to the constitution established by God and the mutual suitableness or fitness of things to each other” (11.2.6). This secondary natural divine right does not enjoy the same degree of necessity or obligation as its primary counterpart: its necessity arises from the order instituted by God (according to which he willed such to be the nature of things depotentia ordinata). For, as Turretin explains,

The former [i.e., primary] is immutably absolute; nor is there any case in which God can relax it because thus he would appear to deny his own nature, on which it is based. Hence he never could command or approve hatred of himself, idolatry, perjury and falsehood. But the latter [i.e., secondary] (although containing the natural rule of rectitude, because it supposes a certain state of things) could in certain cases (the circumstances of things and persons being altered) be changed, but only by his authority who established it. For example, murder and stealing (forbidden in the sixth and eighth commandments) could become lawful, some circumstance being changed—for instance, a divine command or public authority being given. In this respect, it can be referred to positive right; not indeed absolutely and simply such and merely free (which has no foundation except in the will of God alone), but relatively, inasmuch as (although based upon the order of things and created nature) it can still admit of a change in accordance with the wisdom of the legislator, who established that order. (11.2.6)

Thus, in contrast to the primary version, the secondary one is a species of positive right, not absolutely (i.e., arising from the will of God alone) but only relatively (i.e., arising from the created order of things), so that changes in the moral order can occur “in accordance with the wisdom of the legislator, who established that order.”

Thus, it seems that Turretin adopts the fundamental philosophical structure of Scotus’s “synchronically contingent” doctrine of natural law (viz., the first table belongs to natural law in a strict or proper sense: practical principles known from their terms or conclusions necessarily entailed by such, from which there can be no dispensation even by God himself; whereas the second table belongs to natural law in a secondary or extended sense: precepts that “are exceedingly in harmony” with those of the first table, even though they do not follow necessarily from them). Yet, even in his affirmation of the contingency of the moral order, critical qualifications are placed around both the nature (i.e., he rejects an operationalized view of the potentia absoluta) and the extent (i.e., any dispensation is temporary and circumstantially based) of the moral law’s mutability. However, on the question, “Has God ever relaxed any moral precept?” Turretin’s response is more in line with the via antiqua than with the via moderna. In his judgment, the celebrated “hard cases” of late medieval scholastic disputation—to which he provides alternative explanations—do not demonstrate any actual dispensations of the moral law: God’s command to “hate” himself (third commandment), to blaspheme (first commandment), to lie (ninth commandment), (11.2.5), or to forge the images of the cherubim and the serpent (second commandment) (11.2.10), changes in Sabbath observance (fourth commandment) (11.2.21), Christ’s command to “hate” one’s parents (fifth commandment) (11.2.22), the “homicide” of Isaac and the “suicide” of Samson (sixth commandment) (11.2.23), the abolition of the natural right to self-defense in Christ’s command to love one’s enemies (sixth commandment) (11.2.24), the introduction and sanction of slavery (eighth commandment) (11.2.19), the practice of polygamy among the patriarchs (seventh commandment) (11.2.26–28), the permissibility of divorce (seventh commandment) (11.2.29–30), the theft of Egyptian property (eighth commandment) (11.2.32–33), and Hosea’s marriage to Gomer (seventh commandment) (11.2.25).

Turretin’s categorization of the precepts into natural and positive parallels the prior distinction concerning the divine right, which incidentally has a direct bearing upon why some moral precepts are indispensable and others are potentially dispensable in his system. Nearly everyone agrees, on the one hand, “those things that have so close a connection with the nature of God that [the rational creature] cannot but be bound to do them (such as that he should subject himself to and reverence God; should have him for his one only God; and the like), without controversy belong to natural right” (11.2.7). And, on the other, those duties that “flow from the free good will of God and that he was perfectly free to establish or not establish, ought to be referred to positive right” (11.2.7).

What is up for dispute, however, is precisely which precepts belong to natural right and which to positive right. God sometimes relaxes the restrictions of the second table (but never any of the first table), presumably because the moral requirements of those precepts are derivatives of the “created” or “secondary” natural divine right founded on the nature of things, which, as Turretin specified above, is a species of divine positive right and thus mutable. In any event, he is clear that the power of dispensation vis-a`-vis any precept has not been granted to human beings. This article does not arbitrate that dispute but shows instead that Turretin’s view of the indispensability of the moral law is continuous in certain respects with the via antiqua and Duns Scotus’s natural-law doctrine but unsympathetic to the nominalist natural-law theories of, say, William of Occam and Pierre d’Ailly.

Indispensability can be understood in two ways, states Turretin, “either absolutely and simply with respect to God as well as to us; or comparatively and relatively with respect to us and not to God” (11.2.8). It follows from this distinction, therefore, that some precepts are absolutely indispensable by God as well as by us, while others are relatively dispensable by God but not by us because, as creatures subject to the moral law, we cannot add to or take away from it. “Yet this is not the case with respect to God, who, as supreme Lord and lawgiver, could in certain cases dispense with some law given by himself without sin” (11.2.8). The question, then, is whether the precepts of the moral law are of natural right and thus necessary and incapable of being dispensed with, not only by human beings but also by God. In response, Turretin surveys the “celebrated opinions” of three schools of late medieval thought, which provides him with the opportunity to identify the schools with which he is most closely aligned.

The first, and most extreme, opinion is that all precepts of the moral law are potentially dispensable. The moral law, in this viewpoint, is founded on positive right alone (i.e., the free will of God), which means that it can be changed at God’s good pleasure. According to Turretin, William of Occam, Jean Gerson, Pierre d’Ailly, Almayno, and the Socinians all hold to this position. In the case of Occam et al., he relates that their argument stems from “a rash desire to expunge the second precept from the Decalogue and by the power which they claim for their pope of dispensing with the precepts of God” (11.2.10).29 By slight contrast, the Socinians insist upon potential dispensability so that the Mosaic law can be shown to be imperfect and in need of correction. Intriguingly, Turretin alludes to the existence of some within the Reformed camp who are also attracted to this opinion. “These are joined by those of our party who maintain that the moral goodness and wickedness of things flows from no other source than the free will of God; so that things are good and just only because they are commanded, not commanded because they were just antecedently. Thus there is nothing to hinder [God’s] commanding the contrary to them if he wishes” (11.2.10).

The second, and middle, opinion holds that the first three precepts are indispensable, the fourth partially dispensable, and the remaining six fully dispensable. Turretin identifies this position with Duns Scotus and Gabriel Biel who thought that second table precepts should not be seen as belonging to natural divine right. As with the first opinion, some within Reformed orthodoxy “maintain that certain moral precepts of the Decalogue that flow absolutely from the nature of God are absolutely indispensable (such as the first, second, third, seventh, and ninth), but the others, depending upon the free will of God (as the fourth partly, and the fifth, sixth, eighth, and tenth), although immovable and indispensable as to us, still are dispensable as toGod (who can for certain reasons command the contrary and yet do nothing repugnant to his own nature)” (11.2.10).[30]

The third is the opinion of those (such as Thomas Aquinas, Richard of Middleton, Peter Paludanus, et al.) who hold that all precepts of the moral law are indispensable because they each contain “the intrinsic reason of justice and duty; not as proceeding from the law, but as founded on the nature of God and arising from the intrinsic constitution of the thing and the proportion between object and act, compared with right reason or the rational nature” (11.2.10). According to Turretin, the third is the common opinion among the orthodox—at least on this particular point—and the one to which he also subscribes but with the following qualification: All moral precepts are not equally based on the primary right of nature. Some descend in an absolute sense from God’s nature and “command such things as God wills most freely indeed but yet necessarily (and so necessarily and immutably that he cannot will the contrary without a contradiction)” (11.2.11). Others, however, flow from the constitution of the nature of things (the free will of God coming in between) “so they should not be thought to hold an equal degree of necessity and immutability” (11.2.11). In the case of the latter, states Turretin, “Although a dispensation properly so called does not have place in them, still a declaration or interpretation is sometimes given concerning them, the circumstances of the things or persons being changed” (11.2.11). He provides technical definitions of the terms dispensation and declaration or interpretation at the outset of question two: “Obligation is the right of the law over man on account of which the man who is under law is bound to obey it. Dispensation is when, in any case in which the law really prevails and obliges, the obligation of the law is taken away from some man in particular, the rest remaining under obligation. A declaration or interpretation of law is when it is declared that the law does not bind in a particular case” (11.2.2).

V. Conclusion

This article has attempted to establish the feasibility of three critical points with respect to Francis Turretin’s theological system. First, analysis of the faculty of reason in Turretin’s theological anthropology stands not only as a prominent counterexample to the modern generalization that seventeenth-century Protestant scholasticism placed reason on an equal plane with faith; reason is also subordinate to faith as a reliable—although fallible—instrument that yields useful knowledge of the first principles of morality drawn from natural revelation. Second, we have seen that Turretin’s regenerate natural theology and ethics are symbiotically interconnected, which, as such, enabled him to draw a parallel of sorts between the true but non saving knowledge of God ascertainable from natural revelation and the postevangelical, normative use of the law (the so-called tertius usus legis). Third, and following from both of the preceding points, Turretin’s doctrine of natural law is part of a larger complex of related doctrines, on the one hand, and his formulation of natural law is broadly affirmative of the realist natural-law tradition (in its Thomist and Scotist trajectories), on the other. Turretin’s repudiation of the nominalist position of potential dispensability for both first and second table precepts should be understood as emanating from what he said concerning the natural right of God and from his concern to uphold the stability of the moral law in a way that is characteristic of the via antiqua.

Notes

1. Alexander Schweizer, Die Glaubenslehre der evangelisch-reformirten Kirche dargestellt und aus den Quellen belegt (2 vols.; Zurich: Orell, Fu¨ssli, 1844–47); Schweizer, Die protestantischen Centraldogmen in ihrer Entwicklung innerhalb der reformierten Kirche (2 vols.; Zurich: Orell, Fu¨ssli, 1854–56); Heinrich Heppe, “Der Charakter der deutsch-reformirten Kirche und das Verhaltniss derselben zum Luthertum und zum Calvinismus,” Theologische Studien und Kritiken, no. 3 (1850): 669-706; Heppe, Die confessionelle Entwicklung der altprotestantischen Kirche Deutschlands, die altprotestantische Union und die gegenwa¨rtige confessionelle Lage undAufgabe des deutschen Protestantismus (Marburg: Elwert, 1854); Heppe, Die Dogmatik des deutschenProtestantismusimsechzehntenJahrhundert(3 vols.; Gotha: Perthes, 1857); Paul Althaus, DiePrinzi-pien der deutschen reformierten Dogmatik im Zeitalter der aristotelischen Scholastik (Leipzig: Deichert, 1914); Hans Emil Weber, Der Einfluss der protestantischen Schulphilosophie auf die orthodox-lutherische Dogmatik (Leipzig: Deichert, 1908); Weber, Diephilosophische Scholastik des deutschen Protestantismus in Zeitalter der Orthodoxie (Leipzig: Quelle and Meyer, 1907); and Weber, Reformation, Orthodoxie und Rationalismus (3 parts in 2 vols.; 1937–51; repr., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1966).
2. Brian G. Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy: Protestant Scholasticism and Humanism in Seventeenth-Century France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 32.
3. Walter Kickel, Vernunft und Offenbarung bei Theodore Beza: Zum Problem des Verhaltnisses von Theolo-gie, Philosophie und Staat (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1967), 167.
4. Otto Gru¨ndler, “The Influence of Thomas Aquinas upon the Theology of Girolamo Zanchi (1516–1590),” in Studies in Medieval Culture, Series 7, no. 2 (ed. John R. Sommerfeldt; Kalamazoo, Mich.: Western Michigan University 1964), 117; cf Gru¨ndler, Die Gotteslehre Girolami Zanchis undihre Bedeutungfur seine Lehre von der Pradestination (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1965).
5. Alan C. Clifford, Atonement and Justification: English Evangelical Theology 1640–1790: An Evaluation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 98, 129, 243. For a critique of Clifford’s thesis, see Sebastian Rehnman, Divine Discourse: The Theological Methodology of John Owen (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2002), 109–28.
6. Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim, T he Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979). Their view has been challenged by Martin I. Klauber, “The Use of Philosophy in the Theology of Johannes Maccovius (1578–1644),” CTJ30 (Nov. 1995): 376-91; Richard A. Muller, “Scholasticism Protestant and Catholic: Francis Turretin on the Object and Principles of Theology,” CH55 (June 1986): 193-205; Muller, “Vera Philosophia cum sacra Theologia nusquampugnat: Keckermann on Philosophy Theology, and the Problem of Double Truth,” Sixteenth Century Journal 15, no. 3 (1984): 341-65; Sebastian Rehnman, ‘Alleged Rationalism: Francis Turretin on Reason,” CTJ 37 (Nov. 2002): 255-69; and John D. Woodbridge, Biblical Authority: A Critique of the Rogers/McKim Proposal (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1982).
7. For an abbreviated list of seminal contributions to this growing body of knowledge, consult the following bibliography: Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 (4 vols.; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2003); Muller, After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Muller, “The Problem of Protestant Scholasticism—A Review and Definition,” in Reformation and Scholasticism: An Ecumenical Enterprise (ed. Willem J. van Asselt and Eef Dekker; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2001), 45–64; Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2000); John Platt, Reformed Thought and Scholasticism: The Arguments for the Existence of God in Dutch Theology, 1575–1650 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982); Carl R. Trueman and R. S. Clark, eds., Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment(Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster Press, 1999); andWillem J. van Asselt and Eef Dekker, eds., Reformation and Scholasticism: An Ecumenical Enterprise (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2001).
8. Richard A. Muller, Scholasticism and Orthodoxy in the Reformed Tradition: An Attempt at Definition (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Calvin Theological Seminary 1995), 8.
9. Trueman and Clark, eds., introduction to Protestant Scholasticism, xiv. Cf William T Costello, The Scholastic Curriculum at Early Seventeenth-Century Cambridge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958); G R. Evans, Old Arts and New Theology: The Beginnings of Theology as Academic Discipline (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980); Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Evans, Philosophy and Theology in the Middle Ages (New York: Rout-ledge, 1993); and J. A. Weisheipl, “Scholastic Method,” in NCE, 12:1153–70.
10. Emil Brunner and Karl Barth, Natural Theology (“Nature and Grace by Brunner and the Reply “No!” by Barth) (trans. Peter Fraenkel; London: Geoffrey Bles, 1946), 101–10.
11. Ibid., 105.
12. Martin I. Klauber, “Jean-Alphonse Turrettini and the Abrogation of the Formula Consensus in Geneva,” WTJ 53 (1991): 325-38; Klauber, ‘Jean-Alphonse Turrettini (1671–1737) on Natural Theology: The Triumph of Reason over Revelation at the Academy of Geneva,” SJT47, no. 3 (1994): 301-25; and Klauber, “Theological Transition in Geneva: From Jean-Alphonse Turretin to Jacob Vernet,” in Protestant Scholasticism, 256–70.
13. Trueman and Clark, eds., introduction to Protestant Scholasticism, xii. For a scathing condemnation of this type of historiography see James Barr, Biblical Faith andNatural Theology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 109; and Richard A. Muller, “The Barth Legacy: New Athanasius or Origen Redivius? A Response to T F Torrance,” The Thomist 54 (1990): 673-704.
14. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 1:37, 34-37.
15. Ibid., 44-45.
16. John T. McNeill’s classic study, “Natural Law in the Teaching of the Reformers,” JR 26 (July 1946): 168-82, has functioned as the locus classicus for this position in the secondary literature on the subject. See also Lee W. Gibbs, “The Puritan Natural Law Theory of William Ames,” HTR 64 (Jan. 1971): 37-57; W.J. Torrance Kirby “Richard Hooker’s Theory of Natural Law in the Context of Reformation Theology,” Sixteenth Century Journal 30, no. 3 (1999): 681-703; August Lang, “The Reformation and Natural Law,” in Calvin and the Reformation (ed. William Park Armstrong; trans. J. G. Machen; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1980), 56–98; Robert Letham, “The Foedus Operum: Some Factors Accounting for Its Development,” Sixteenth Century Journal 14 (Winter 1983): 461, 457–67; John T McNeill, “Natural Law in the Thought of Luther,” CH 10 (Sept. 1941): 211-27; and Susan E. Schreiner, The Theater of His Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1991; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1995), 73.
17. For a survey of the influence of Aristotle’s Ethics and the natural-law tradition on Reformed orthodoxy see Wilhelm Geesink’s 1897 Rectoral Address “De Geschiedenis der Gereformeerde Ethiek,” reprinted in Gereformeerde Ethiek, Vol. 2 (Kampen: Kok, 1931), 453–511, especially 453–77; Donald Sinnema, “Aristotle and Early Reformed Orthodoxy: Moments of Accommodation and Antithesis,” in Christianity and the Classics: The Acceptance of a Heritage (ed. Wendy E. Helleman; Lan-ham, Md.: University Press of America, 1990), 119–48; and Sinnema, “The Discipline of Ethics in Early Reformed Orthodoxy,” CTJ28 (April 1993): 10-44. For an acknowledgement of the role and importance of natural theology and the natural-law tradition in Protestant theology two years prior to the Barth-Brunner debate, see Hans von Steubing, Naturrechtundnaturliche Theologieim Protestantismus (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1932), 85–161.
18. Brunner and Barth, Natural Theology, 102.
19. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology (3 vols.; Phillipsburg, NJ.: P&R, 1992–97), 1.13.2. Subsequent citations to this work will be referenced in parentheses in the text according to topic, question, and paragraph numbers.
20. Rehnman, “Alleged Rationalism,” 261–62; cf. Turretin, Institutes, 1.10.2, 5, 8, 9, 11–16.
21. Rehnman, “Alleged Rationalism,” 264.
22. Ibid., 264-65. For a more detailed analysis of the differences in formulation among the early Reformers concerning the noetic effects of the fall on human reason, see David C. Steinmetz, “Calvin and the Natural Knowledge of God,” in Calvin in Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 23–39. Stephen K. Moroney has done significant work in this area of study; see also “The Noetic Effects of Sin: An Exposition of Calvin’s View and a Constructive Theological Proposal” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1995); Moroney, “How Sin Affects Scholarship: A New Model,” Christian Scholar’s Review 28 (Spring 1999): 432-51; and Moroney, The Noetic Effects of Sin: A Historical and Contemporary Exploration of How Sin Affects Our Thinking (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2000). For a recent critique of Moroney’s book, see Dewey J. Hoitenga, Jr., “The Noetic Effects of Sin: A Review Article,” CTJ 38 (April 2003): 68-102.
23. For more on the differences between realist and nominalist natural-law doctrines, see Stephen J. Grabill, “Theological Foundation for a Reformed Doctrine of Natural Law” (Ph.D. diss., Calvin Theological Seminary, 2004), 78–83; Kevin McDonnell, “Nominalist Natural Law Theory Revisited: Gabriel Biel,” in The Medieval Tradition of Natural Law (ed. Harold J. Johnson; Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications and Western Michigan University, 1987), 129–36; Francis Oakley, “Locke, Natural Law, and God: Again,” in Politics and Eternity: Studies in the History of Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999), 219–24; Oakley, “Medieval Theories of Natural Law: William of Occam and the Significance of the Voluntarist Tradition,” Natural Law Forum 6 (1961): 65-83; and Stephen J. Pope, “Natural Law and Christian Ethics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics (ed. Robin Gill; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 77–95.
24. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 1:300. Cf. Stephen Charnock, “Discourse of the Knowledge of Christ,” in The Works of the Late Learned Divine Stephen Charnock, B.D.: Being Several Discourses upon Various Divine Subjects (2 vols.; London: Printed by A. Maxwell and R. Roberts for Tho. Cockeril, 1684), 2:486–88, 474–552.
25. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 1:308. Cf. Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1985), s.v. “usus legis.”
26. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 1:308.
27. Cf. John Duns Scotus, Contingency and Freedom: Lectura I39 (introduction, translation, and commentary by Antonie Vos et al.; Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), 23–36; Antonie Vos, “De Kern van de klassieke gereformeerde theologie: Een traditiehistorisch gesprek,” Kerk en theologie 47 (1996): 114-22, 106–25; Vos, “Scholasticism and Reformation,” in Reformation and Scholasticism: An Ecumenical Enterprise (ed. Willem J. van Asselt and Eef Dekker; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2001), 110–15, 99–119; Andreas J. Beck, “Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676): Basic Features of His Doctrine of God,” in Reformation and Scholasticism, 205–26; and Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 3:443–52.
28. Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, 94, 2; 100, 3. It should be acknowledged that Turretin is making a strong metaphysical claim here with respect to natural law: Natural law has ontic validity, was divinely promulgated, and is true regardless of the clarity with which it is known.
29. For historical support to Turretin’s allegation, see Francis Oakley, “‘Adamantine Fetters of Destiny’: The Absolute and Ordained Powers of God and King in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Politics and Eternity: Studies in the History of Medieval and Early-Modern Political Thought (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999), 279–91; Oakley, “Pierre d’Ailly and the Absolute Power of God: Another Note on the Theology of Nominalism,” HTR 56 (Jan. 1963): 59-73; Oakley, The Political Thought of Pierre d’Ailly: The Voluntarist Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964); Eugenio Randi, “Ockham, John XXII, and the Absolute Power of God,” Franciscan Studies 46 (1986): 205-16; and Taina M. Holopainen, “William of Ockham’s Theory of the Foundations of Ethics” (Ph.D. diss., Helsingin Yliopisto University, 1991).
30. For more on Scotus’s view, see Mary Elizabeth Ingham, Ethics and Freedom: An Historical-Critical Investigation of Scotist Ethical Thought (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1989); Robert Prentice, O.F.M., “The Contingent Element Governing the Natural Law on the Last Seven Precepts of the Decalogue According to Duns Scotus,” Anton 42 (1967): 259-92; Thomas Williams, “The Libertarian Foundations of Scotus’s Moral Philosophy,” The Thomist 62 (April 1998): 193-215; Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M., “Native Freedom of the Will as a Key to the Ethics of Scotus,” in The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus (ed. Marilyn McCord Adams; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 160–62; and Wolter, Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 57–63, 263–88.