Following her last section on human agency, Brett turns next to the changing notions of natural law in early modernity. As she interprets her Protestant and Catholic interlocutors, it is natural law which represents the principles of choice available to “free” human agents in civil affairs. She argues that the concept and space of natural law was gradually “re-framed” during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The initial conditions for this shift were provided by the “critical synergy” of humanist jurisprudence and Protestant reforms of ethical philosophy.

On the Protestant side, Brett takes Melanchthon as the key progenitor and distinguishes between his early and mature theories of law and natural reason. While initially affected by Luther’s allergy to “pagan” reason, Melanchthon came to develop a more constructive system wherein “moral philosophy is a part of divine law.” As such, the law of nature “is truly the law of God” as far as the “virtues that reason understands.” For Melanchthon, then, natural law functions as a civil philosophy, in a properly external sphere of action.

Brett suggests that Calvinist theorists were more resistant to this external/internal division of human agency. The early Melanchthon was especially insistent on this distinction, to the point that he could write bluntly: “I maintain that religious belief must be drawn from the divine Scriptures; but concerning civil behavior, I would prefer to listen to Cicero.” (Brett does not reference this passage, but I would be interested to see whether or how the later Melanchthon would qualify this statement.)

Choosing Melanchthon as the primary discussion partner makes a good deal of sense, considering how Brett’s argument unfolds later on. However, I wondered how this discussion might have looked with at least a sidelong glance at Vermigli, another early Protestant Aristotelian. Melanchthon maintains a rather strong distinction between external natural virtues (pursued via reason) and internal revelations of the sinfulness of humanity and the need for forgiveness of sins. The external/internal distinction doesn’t strike me as anything novel in that early modern context. But how the external and interal relate to each other seems more interesting.

With Vermigli, at least, I wonder whether there might be a more open framework for creational virtues, one which is more resistant to a dichotomous system like in early Melanchthon. Vermigli’s commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics has a fascinating passage on this topic. Vermigli, much like Melanchthon, argues that Aristotle’s “natural virtue” fails to account for the corruptions of sin, and therefore does not comprehend the truths of revelation. But at the same time, Aristotle’s natural virtues look strikingly similar to Vermigli’s “creational virtues,” since “if we speak of man as created by God… there can be no doubt that in his created state he was also equipped with virtues.” But even after the fall, human nature “is suited to and capable of receiving the virtues, if we are speaking of the civil and moral kind.” The “true virtues,” such as faith, hope, and love, might be received by our natures as well, but only provided that God Himself inspires them.

So far, the distinction seems fairly straight-forward. But there are two complications.

First, for Vermigli piety is a civil virtue. And since Vermigli associates the Christian commonwealth with the Aristotelian community of virtue (as Torrance Kirby points out), the Christian civil realm is knowledgable of the sorts of revealed truths about which pagan states remain ignorant. In this way, the Christian magistrate “directs the life of the commonwealth towards its highest appointed end and it is through the instrumentality of the Magistrate that the divine purpose of the human enjoyment of God is promoted.” Vermigli references the Mosaic civil law as an instance where “God’s laws” tend toward the highest attainment of human flourishing.

Second, and following on the inclusion of piety as a (external) virtue, divine and human authorities must be distinguished, but the “space” they occupy and the ends they pursue are not intrinsically opposed. Vermigli clearly desired an explicitly confessional magistracy — to the point of producing a rather florid panegyric to Queen Elizabeth I. The external (civil) oversight of piety was simply assumed by Vermigli.

All that said, a couple lingering problems remain, at least on my initial reading. Despite Vermigli’s assertion elsewhere that we ought to distinguish clearly between divine and human authorities (with Rome in his crosshairs), how successful is this early Reformed civic theology at protecting against the conflation of the two external governments: ecclesial and civil? I’m curious whether Vermigli makes much use of the concept of participatation which is so important to Aquinas and some of the more neoplatonically-inflected Protestant humanists.

Returning to Brett, the problem of participation shows up in Catholic natural law developments as well. For example, she notes the Jesuits’ shift away from Aquinas’ view of eternal law and the “intimate connection” between natural inclinations and natural law. While the earlier Thomism had preserved an aspect of prerational nature (whereby natural law directs our inclinations toward their proper end), the Jesuits undermined this notion by divesting the eternal law of its legal status (and perhaps participation as well?). For this Jesuit school of thought, all law must involve an act of imperium.

Interestingly, Brett notes that while many Protestant theorists also emphasized the rational nature of law (against Ulpian), there were some theorists who preserved a more positive place for natural inclinations. Here, Brett mentions Melanchthon’s application of the Stoic idea of “natural love” and natural affections. And I thought of Martin Bucer’s use of very similar language when talking about natural love and the virtues of creation. Also, Bucer (much like Vermigli) holds out a great deal of hope that the Christian commonwealth possesses the knowledge and virtues which make it possible to recover or re-orient these natural goods and affections.

Still looming ominously on the horizon, however, is Hobbes’ Leviathan.

Brett shows how later generations of Calvinists answered this line of critique by making a crucial distinction between the voluntary and the spontaneous. As Pierre Du Moulin (1568–1658) argued, while every action that is voluntary is spontaneous, not every action that is spontaneous is voluntary. Animals act of their own accord (they are not coerced) and with spontaneous “inclinations.” But voluntary actions, which animals are incapable of, “are done with some knowledge and reason.” Brett comments that this “intellectualist tenor” resounds of some of the Thomist critiques of Molinism.

Following on this voluntary/spontaneous distinction, du Moulin is able to carve out a space for purely voluntary (and therefore uniquely human) “civil” actions. Brett intriguingly positions these Calvinist deliberations alongside Thomist-Jesuit parallels, and argues that pretty much everyone at the time (with the crucial exception of Thomas Hobbes) agreed that the human will was voluntarily free in the political sphere. Since the civil is associated with the voluntary acts of the will, the Calvinists (among others) carved out space for a civil government grounded not by physical compulsion, but by command and voluntary agreement. Brett also seems to imply (perhaps this will be validated in later chapters) that the Calvinist account, and not the Lutheran one, de-centered the idea of hierarchical human dominium over the rest of creation. Rather, they emphasize (like some Thomists) the central and internal role of reason instead of the external exercise of that rational dominium (the position they ascribed to the Arminians).

But in recent years this entrenched resistance to natural law has begun to change on two fronts. First, as evangelicals have found themselves fighting alongside conservative Roman Catholics on various social issues, they have also encountered agreeable Catholic arguments which operate fully in a natural law framework. Second, on the academic front, scholars have begun to explore earlier Protestant uses of natural law, which remained surprisingly resilient throughout Anglican, Reformed, and Lutheran dogmatics for at least three hundred years. As Matthew Lee Anderson summarized in a recent issue of Christianity Today, “there may be signs that the frost on the relationship between evangelicals and the natural law tradition is melting.” It seems the on-the-ground political alliance between evangelicals and Catholics may have some unintended consequences.

Yet, the situation may not be so straightforward. Contrary to Henry’s belief, the concept of natural law was in fact deeply embedded in earlier Protestant ethics, particularly the early reformers and their scholastic successors. However, as Henry’s essay also makes clear, many modern evangelicals are not familiar with, or agreeable to, the kind of “natural” reasoning that such a system expects. At the same time, and perhaps more importantly, evangelicals are often unaware of the surprising diversity of opinion on the natural law, even in Catholic circles. This is to be expected, considering how fundamentalists and evangelicals vigorously disavowed all forms of natural law throughout the twentieth-century, when many of these debates and distinctions were multiplying. For example, Henry’s critique of an autonomous, non-theological use of reason does not apply to every form of natural law theory. Likewise, today, evangelicals may hear one natural law critique of homosexual marriage from a conservative Catholic but not realize that there are many counter-opinions from more progressive Catholic theologians and theorists. In this type of situation, it may be premature for evangelicals for jump on the natural law bandwagon without taking a closer look at the complex history of natural law theory, especially the homegrown varieties within the Protestant tradition itself.

There’s a fruitful discussion still to be had.

While there’s no shortage of Yoder aficionados (many of them outside the Free Church tradition), there are still many in the Reformed and Protestant mainstream who find Yoder difficult to understand or appreciate. However, J. Alexander Sider’s new book To See History Doxologically should help to break down the remaining barriers. Sider writes from within the Free Church tradition, as far as I can tell, but he’s quite willing to find fault question Yoder’s theology and methodology when necessary. (In fact, his critique of Yoder’s historical reading of Constantine was picked up by Peter Leithart in Defending Constantine.)

In light of all this, I was fascinated by Sider’s chapter putting Yoder and O’Donovan into conversation about where doxology takes place in this world. Sider notes that both theologians agree on many counts, especially on the key doctrine that the political worship of the church is a participation in the coming kingdom. Therefore, salvation is pictured as the “promise of a gathered community that is called to follow Jesus.”

Sider’s critique of O’Donovan (via Yoder) centers on related issues of hermeneutics and ecclesiology. On the first count, Sider questions O’Donovan’s rather Protestant approach to scripture, which he believes departs from the hermeneutic of Augustine, Origen, and – yes – Yoder. O’Donovan, he argues, keeps interpretation “rooted firmly in history” in way that resists giving “priority” to certain passages over others. There is just a little too much epistemic certainty and autonomy in O’Donovan’s exegesis. Yoder, on the other hand, emphasized that the “community of interpretation” was the “final arbiter of what the text says.”

This leads to a second departure. Since Yoder stressed the ecclesial reception and expression of the text, this also reinforces the notion that salvation itself – like the scriptural text – does not have priority over or outside the ecclesial body of Christ. In other words, Yoder’s view of salvation is one of a communal event or response to the promise of Christ. As such, he resists the kind of historicism that would de-center the community’s ever-new experience of the gift of God throughout history. Sider believes this reveals something even more crucial: A Yoderian ecclesiology resists O’Donovan’s notion that the order of creation itself will receive eschatological vindication. Rather, for Yoder the “vindication” is not for the whole created order as such, but “the creation of the church.” Seen from this perspective, O’Donovan misguidedly talks of the heavenly Jerusalem as if it had no borders, and as if “there remains nothing but the city.” Sider notes here that O’Donovan sounds very much like Barth, whose cosmic definition of salvation is at the heart of a Constantinian dynamic.

Clearly, these are not just surface-level differences. And I imagine that many in the Reformed tradition will be unable to grant many of Sider’s foundational critiques. However, in reading this chapter I was impressed by two things: first, Sider’s non-polemical presentation of O’Donovan’s very Calvinist positions; and second, the many avenues for discussion that Sider opens up. Calvinists and Anabaptists may still be diametrically opposed on these issues, but Sider’s appropriation of Yoder at least has us speaking the same language. (In fact, I wondered whether some Free Church readers might even find Sider’s presentation and language somewhat unfamiliar.) I was challenged by Sider’s articulation of the church’s distinctiveness. And while I remain unconvinced by his conclusion — particularly the juxtaposition of creation and church — I believe he strikes at a fundamental question for both Calvinists and Yoderians: Does the doxology of God’s people acknowledge a rule that exists independently of that praise? Or is it truly realized (and not just proleptically) through the church’s difficult yet graced pursuit of holiness?

My initial thoughts may only point to dead-ends, but I couldn’t help but think of two potential theological avenues to pursue in this regard: 1) Barth’s ontology of divine freedom and election may help to open up certain metaphysical constraints of the old NLT while simultaneously providing a robustly theological grounding for a philosophy of science and moral experience. 2) Perhaps some of the early modern Protestants could be called on to help out as well. The 20^th century anti-realist critiques that Stout references in his essay find some surprising parallels in late medieval and early modern philosophy. Many of the early Reformed theologians turned to the doctrines of providence and redemption (composite accounts of God remaining faithful to His creation) to defend a revised form of the old doctrine of ordo quem ratio non facit. So, while reason does not constitute the moral order per se, there can be a kind of lived expression of human rationality that participates in the divine order.

On this count, Bouwsma reckons, Stoicism and Augustinianism occupy privileged ground, especially for their own rhetorical similarities. The former combined an Aristotelian materialism with the ethics of Socates, and “the hint of an Asian passion for righteousness with … the severe moralism of Rome.” Augustinianism, like its counterpart, reflected a kind of eclecticism in its search for some grounds for order amid confusion. Both streams of thought also rely on a strong doctrine of divine providence in the world and a kind of moral seriousness. Unlike Stoicism, however, Augustinianism articulates a particularly Christian notion of creation which is distinct, even antithetical to a Stoic view of immanence, in which the cosmos itself is inherently eternal and divine. In terms of virtue, then, the recourse of the Stoic was to follow the right dictates of reason, by which the intemperate passions would be subdued. Bouwsma argues that Augustinianism contradicts this view “at every point.” Since every human being is a creature of God, we cannot view reason as divine. It is only possible to know the will of God through the scriptures and particular revelations of God Himself. Unlike Stoicism, in which the will is subject to reason, Augustinian anthropology posits a more mysterious and wily view of the will; it cannot be so easily controlled.

Underlying these various differences is an even more fundamental divide over how we ought to view the order of the universe:

For the Stoics a single cosmic order, rational and divine, pervaded all things…. The perfection of that order meant that whatever is is right, however uncomfortable or tragic for mankind; at the heart of Stoicism is that familiar cosmic optimism which signifies, for the actual experience of men, the deepest pessimism. Against all this, Augustinianism, though by no means denying in principle the ultimate order of the universe, rejected its intelligibility and thus its coherence and its practical significance for man. The result was to free both man and society from their old bondage to cosmic principles, and to open up a secular vision of human existence and a wide range of pragmatic accommodations to the exigencies of life impossible in the Stoic religious universe. In this sense Augustinianism provided a charter for human freedom and a release for the diverse possibilities of human creativity.

Bouwsma notes that Calvin, “for all his concern to maintain the distinction between God and nature,” inclined toward a kind of Stoic belief in the rational or mechanistic creational order which God Himself had instituted and even now preserves. The rational and cosmic order influences the mind of the human person, as even the supposedly misanthropic Calvin is keen to note. In fact, this allegedly Stoic impulse trusts that “man’s perception of the rational order of the universe tells him a good deal about the nature and will of God, and that man’s reason is thus the link between himself and God.” The implications for a theory of virtue and civil order are not hard to follow through: These orders must reflect the singular principles of universal reason in particular situations, as governed by wise and reasonable persons. And since the opposite of reason is ignorance, proper order was most threatened by stupidity. As Erasmus alleged: “You cannot be a prince if you are not a philosopher.” Perhaps on this count, Bouwsma hints, Stoic humanism displayed its tendency to want to avoid some of the more practical problems of the fledgling modern world (hence its disapproval of cities, political particularity, and those who lacked formal education).

While the system of Stoicism must begin with the cosmos, Bouwsma believes that Augustinianism naturally starts with the human person and from that point moves humbly outward to the universe. The limits of human cognition should temper our cosmic aspirations from the first. Perhaps unexpectedly, Bouwsma associates a view of the freedom of the will with this Augustinian humanism. In fact, while both humanist types used the old vocabulary of the faculties, the Stoic emphasis on right reason was countered by an Augustinian emphasis on the will. Here Bouwsma summarizes: “The will, in this view, is seen to take its direction not from reason but from the affections, which are in turn not merely the disorderly impulses of the treacherous body but expressions of the energy and quality of the heart.” Further, by de-centering reason, the Augustinian type helped to relieve the body of its singular culpability when it comes to human sinfulness. Reason is now equally guilty of rebellion. In fact, as Melanchthon suggested, the Pauline notion of sinful “flesh” must especially signify reason, “the site of unbelief.”

For a theology of virtue, Augustinian humanism emphasized that goodness and happiness were not proper to sinful humanity. This is the true self-knowledge which leads back toward God, the source of blessedness and existence itself.

Interestingly (and problematically), Bouwsma suggests that “humanists of more Stoic tendencies, like Erasmus, seem to have been less likely to become Protestants than those of the more Augustinian kind. But the more Augustinian humanist might end up in either the Protestant or Catholic camp.” At the same time, Bouwsma believes we can catch glimpses of a resurgent and more secular Stoic element coming through in later Protestant thought, such as the re-working of natural law by Grotius.

Bouwsma’s narrative has undergone some critique over the past thirty or so years, but some intriguing questions remain, at least for me:

• Is Calvin the most complete synthesis of Bouwsma’s types? His position seems to place him right the confluence of these streams of thought. Perhaps most notably, there is Calvin’s initial assertion that “knowledge of man” and “knowledge of God” both properly circle back on the other. Whichever origin point you choose will culminate in the unspeakable power and nature of God and also the right affections which that nature inspires within the human heart.
• How can we see natural law theory adapting to these various streams of humanism? Does the idea of reason’s participation in the eternal law fit more in the Stoic or Augustinian mold? Or are those categories insufficient to explain that aspect of moral theory?
• Does an Augustinian secularity really possess the resources necessary for a strong view of nature-in-itself?

• Schreiner wants to protect against the tendency of some to “reify” modernity, particularly in the common (but too easy) move to see its early development “as the beginning of the withdrawal of the transcendent, the fragmentation of the former synthesis, and the division between form and content.” In addition, Schreiner identifies von Ranke as perhaps the most seminal proponent of the thesis that the Reformation birthed modernity. Despite the complexifying turn in 20th century historiography, it’s striking just how pervasive this interpretation has remained. Still, I suppose the heirs of the magisterial Reformation are largely responsible for this (although I found that many Catholics in academic circles still adopt that line of thought with a more polemical intent).
• It’s still common to hear that the 17th century was the critical, rationalistic break with late medievalism. But Schreiner suggests that, while the 17th century was certainly characterized by a rationalistic search for certainty, we shouldn’t contrast it with the preceding quest of the 14th through 16th centuries. In fact, as she later argues, this earlier era was centrally concerned to solve the problem of certitude itself (even if it used a different methodology).
• Although I still find Calvin’s theology to resonate with a kind of noetically modified realism, Schreiner’s interpretation of Ockham gave me reason to pause. She emphasizes that Ockham’s “epistemology stressed both the primacy of direct experience and the importance of the singular.” For Ockham, the “hunger for reality” put “the human being in direct contact with his home: namely, the created or ordained realm.” This concern with experience and the immediacy of knowledge suggests some interesting similarities with Calvin, most particularly among the magisterial reformers.
• Schreiner suggests that the early moderns deviated from Aristotle in a critical way. Aristotle had differentiated between dialectic and logic, since only the latter deals with necessarily true propositions. But the “identification of dialectics and certainty had become frequent by the early modern era.” In other words, it seems dialectic was no longer limited to rhetoric, but could now access or uncover propositional truth more directly.
• The third chapter is a fascinating exploration of how the reformers viewed the prospects for exegetical certainty, first, against the “pious doubt” of Trent, and second, guarding against the fanatici who took the principle of Spiritual inspiration too far, in the magisterial reformers’ opinion. On the latter point, Schreiner highlights the move by Luther and Calvin to emphasize the union of external (Word) and internal (Spirit) meaning/certainty. I wondered: Is this the Augustinian move that ultimately distinguishes between the Lutheran/Reformed mainstream and much of the rest of the early modern Protestant tradition? Also: Are there ways in which this Augustinian ressourcement was carried out more or less succesfully in different areas (I’m thinking here of later Lutheran and Calvinist Christological and eucharistic debates)?