Natural law has long been a cornerstone of Christian political thought, providing moral norms that ground law in a shareable account of human goods and obligations. Despite this history, twentieth and twenty-first-century evangelicals have proved quite reticent to embrace natural law, casting it as a relic of scholastic Roman Catholicism that underestimates the import of scripture and the division between Christians and non-Christians. As recent critics have noted, this reluctance has posed significant problems for the coherence and completeness of evangelical political reflections. Responding to evangelically-minded thinkers' increasing calls for a re-engagement with natural law, this volume explores the problems and prospects attending evangelical rapprochement with natural law. Many of the chapters are optimistic about an evangelical re-appropriation of natural law, but note ways in which evangelical commitments might lend distinctive shape to this engagement.
Natural law has long been a cornerstone of Christian political thought, providing moral norms that ground law in a shareable account of human goods and obligations. Despite this history, twentieth and twenty-first-century evangelicals have proved quite reticent to embrace natural law, casting it as a relic of scholastic Roman Catholicism that underestimates the import of scripture and the division between Christians and non-Christians. As recent critics have noted, this reluctance has posed significant problems for the coherence and completeness of evangelical political reflections. Responding to evangelically-minded thinkers' increasing calls for a re-engagement with natural law, this volume explores the problems and prospects attending evangelical rapprochement with natural law. Many of the chapters are optimistic about an evangelical re-appropriation of natural law, but note ways in which evangelical commitments might lend distinctive shape to this engagement.
Introduction
Part I: Understanding Evangelical Discomfort with Natural Law
Chapter 1: Burying the Wrong Corpse: Evangelicals and Natural
Law
J. Daryl Charles, Bryan College
Chapter 2: Karl Barth’s Eschatological (rejection of) Natural
Law
Jesse Couenhoven, Villanova University
Chapter 3: The Doctrine of Creation and the Possibilities of an
Evangelical Natural Law
Bryan McGraw, Wheaton College
Part II: Evangelicalism and Natural Law: Continuing Questions
Chapter 4: Natural Law and Mosaic Law in the Theology of Paul:
Their Relationship and Its Implications
David VanDrunen, Westminster Seminary California
Chapter 5: Natural Law, God, and Human Dignity Robert George,
Princeton University
Chapter 6: Reason and Will in Natural Law
Paul DeHart, Texas State University—San Marcos
Chapter 7: Natural Law: Friend of Common Grace?
Vincent Bacote, Wheaton College
Part III: An Evangelical Natural Law Tradition? Charting a Path
Forward
Chapter 8: The Grammar of Virtue: St. Augustine and the Natural
Law
Jesse Covington, Westmont College
Chapter 9: C.S. Lewis as Natural Law Evangelist: Evangelical
Political Thought and the People in the Pew
Micah Watson, Union University
Chapter 10: The Natural Law and the Church as ‘Counter-Polis’
Matthew D. Wright, Biola University
Chapter 11: More Than a Passing Fancy? The Evangelical Engagement
with Natural Law
J. Budziszewski, University of Texas, Austin
Jesse Covington is assistant professor of political science at
Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA.
Bryan McGraw is an assistant professor of politics and
international relations at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL.
Micah Watson is director of the Center for Politics & Religion and
assistant professor of political science at Union University in
Jackson, Tennessee.
In this excellent, scholarly volume, thoughtful essays by J.D.
Charles, R. George, and others examine the reticence of most modern
evangelicals to the claims of natural law theory.
*Religious Studies Review*
An important contribution to the literature on evangelical
political thought. The authors tackle a critical topic with
interesting and diverse arguments, analyses, and insights. Highly
recommended.
*David L. Weeks, Azusa Pacific University*
This volume offers both substantial reflection on the concept of
natural law in particular and encouraging signs of serious
evangelical thought in general. Because of the volume's high level
of careful engagement, the book deserves a wide readership from
political theorists as well as at least some political
activists.
*Mark A. Noll, University of Notre Dame*
Professors Covington, McGraw, and Watson have assembled a fine
collection of essays that analyzes the ways in which evangelical
theologians can and should engage natural law’s intellectual
pedigree and contemporary relevance. Three strengths of the book
are (1) its insightful critiques of voluntarism; (2) its
articulation of natural law’s amenability to a common language for
public reasoning and discourse; and (3) its helpful appraisal of
natural law’s Achilles tendon, that is, its susceptibility to being
co-opted by the status quo.
*Journal of Markets & Morality*
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