Natural Law: An Introduction, Part 6
As it supplants Revelation [Revolution] acquires the influence of a new Religion of Humanity, kindling in the hearts of its confessors a fanaticism that acknowledges no distinction of means in order to attain its ends.
Groen van Prinsterer, Unbelief and Revolution, 1847
The Christian...imagines the better future of the human species...in the image of heavenly joy...We, on the other hand, will this heaven on earth.
Moses Hess, A Communist Confession of Faith, 1846
Why is This Happening?
Polling indicates that currently, only 18% of Americans are "satisfied," with the way things are going in the US, with 81% believing that our democracy is "threatened." Politically-alert Americans hardly need reminding that our political division is disturbing, with both major parties threatening that if the other is elected, this could mean the end of our country. Indeed, we seem to be coming apart. The cause of the polarization is far more than discrete policy disagreements over defense or taxation, or mere regional factionalism. Rather the cause is an ideological crisis. In fact, it is the culmination of a centuries-old religious war.
An impressive number of books, including by Evangelicals, sounds a deafening alarm that variations of "critical theory" or "identity politics" are taking over our republican form of government, the news media, education, corporations, charitable foundations, and even churches -- placing our society and even our civilization at risk.[1] Some trace the ideology to the early 20th century, to the Frankfurt School, or limit it to the rise of "identity politics," denying that it has anything to do with classical Marxism.
What then we are dealing with? While the Church must recognize a dangerous trend, we can't address it adequately unless we understand its origins. This will help us detect it, and also resist it when it has begun to influence the Church itself. We cannot afford to be "...the incompetent physician who fights the symptoms but does not know the cause of the disease."[2]
Natural Law, Humanism, and Socialism
My thesis is as follows: Just as natural law is the moral theory of Christendom prior to modernity, socialism is the moral theory of modern atheistic Humanism. Because modern socialism is born of another religion, Humanism, it is hostile to Christianity-based natural law; indeed, it seeks to destroy it.[3] Its hostility to Christendom and to natural law is analogous to Baal or Moloch worship in the Old Testament, the practice of which continually threatened the worship of Yahweh. And just as ancient Israel had to resist pagan idolatry, the Church must resist the siren's song of socialist ideology.[4]
The extreme dangers of socialism should be well-known, but in a kind of collective amnesia, no doubt intended by some, these dangers are often ignored or explained away. As Milan Kundera said, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Joshua Muravchic estimates that since 1917, 100 million people have died under socialist regimes, including the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, China under Mao, and Cambodia under Pol Pot.[5] In addition, severe prohibitions on freedom of speech, secret police, the arrest, persecution, and assassination of political opponents, forced labor camps, mass starvation, wiretapping and other forms of surveillance, and religious discrimination are typically constitutive of socialist regimes. The detection of socialist ideology should be met with the same alarm as calls for the reintroduction of chattel slavery or concentration camps. Tragically, for reasons I will explore below, this is not happening.
Part of the reason for our forgetting is that as a cultural phenomenon, socialism is not necessarily linked to theory -- socialist convictions can develop without direct exposure to socialist theory proper, sometimes through a naive desire for a perfect world free of inequality, but also through guilt for one's advantages, or the incentivizing of envy. Guilt manipulation goes hand in hand with the vice of envy, wherein those with advantages, whether earned or not, are resented by those who see themselves as inferior, the "superiors" then responding with guilt and seeking atonement through compliance with their demands.[6] This is of course the strategic genius of the Oppressor/Oppressed distinction, i.e., that envy, a violation of the 10th Commandment, can be weaponized to produce guilt, one of, if not the most powerful incentive in the human psyche.
If a political candidate or party is socialistic, the Church must oppose that candidate or party by uniformly voting against them at the very least, if not pursuing all legitimate political means to defeat them. In our American political context, there are two dominant parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. As is well-recognized, the Democratic Party has been trending steadily toward socialism at least since the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Despite its manifest flaws, the Republican Party offers the only political instrument the Church has to resist our nation's further slide into socialist policies and practices.
Natural Law and the State
The witness of nature together with Scripture affirms three institutions ordained by and under the sovereignty of God, each independent and possessing its own authority, yet deeply interrelated: the church, the family, and the state. When the integrity of these three are violated, e.g., when the state demands reverence and loyalty due God alone, or violates the sanctity of the family by hiding gender confusion from parents, or requires that Christians remain silent to accommodate modern ideology, the result is not only idolatrous, but calamitous for all three institutions.
A key element in maintaining the integrity of the three institutions is private property. The integrity of private property is recognized by Scripture in the 8th and 10th Commandments, "You shall not steal" and "You shall not covet," as well as numerous additional verses and passages (e.g., Deut. 19:14; Prov. 23:10; Rom. 13:9). Private property defines and restricts the boundaries of each institution and is thus a buttress against the depredations of innate depravity. National borders function similarly to prevent the absorption of one state by another, or indeed, all of humanity under one tyrannical state. National borders also provide persecuted peoples with the opportunity to escape discrimination and persecution, as we see historically with the Moravians, the Huguenots, and the Puritans.
Whereas socialism assumes the cause of human evil lies in how society is organized, and believes the transformation of society will liberate people to express their inherent goodness, Christian natural law assumes the opposite, that the cause of evil lies in the human heart.[7] Neither the state nor the church may demand that Christians hand over their property (1 Kings 21:1-23). Private property thus justifies efforts to resist the tyrannical absorption of family and church by the state.
According to the fifth commandment, certain forms of inequality are "natural." The man is the natural and biblical head of the family, and men are to lead the church. All must respect persons in authority, whether they are teachers, employers, or political leaders (1 Pet. 2:13; Titus 3:1).
Ultimately, all authority is given by God in Christ (Rom. 13:1; Matt. 28:18). Thus, mere government by consent of the governed is not enough without recognizing the authority of God because all authority is given by God, and he demands worship. Government by consent of the governed in a republic, with strong checks and balances to prevent tyranny by any one branch, is arguably the best form of government ever devised by man, yet for government by consent of the governed to function properly, the voters, or a critical mass of them, must recognize God as sovereign and vote according to the creation order he designed for our well-being, as the Founders recognized. When the voters reject this, or begin voting against the natural order, God allows a society to become degenerate and self-destructive (Rom. 1:18-32).
Depending on how far along a society is in becoming depraved, honest, candid discussion in mutual respect between Christians and non-Christians will become increasingly difficult, such that "finding a middle way" will require moral compromise. Consequently, there will be increasing conflict between those who fear God and those who reject him.
Socialism: A Very, Very Short History
In confronting socialism, the first thing the Church must realize is that socialism is less an ideology than a phenomenon.[8] It is akin to a virus that can affect a society's thinking such that the state begins attacking or undermining other institutions God has established, especially, the church and the family. Thus, socialism is hardly new. Secondly, we must realize is that it is one of the most powerful forces in human history. A popular misconception is that socialism began during the French Revolution. In fact, socialism predates Christianity by several centuries. It has a long history across disparate cultures. Ancient Egypt and the Inca Empire employed elements of collective control that resemble modern versions of socialism. In Assemblywomen, Aristophanes depicts a feminist-socialist coup d'etat in which private property is banned, children are raised "in common," and full sexual equality is demanded by law, along with "free love," the rejection of monogamy. Plato recommends a socialist state in his Republic which institutes collective ownership, and replaces the family with common parenting and eugenics through a pseudo-lottery. Thomas More's Utopia abolishes private property and legalizes euthanasia, though he retains the sexual morality of traditional Christianity. In the Reformation era, splinter groups led by Anabaptists sought to create socialist societies, often with horrific results.
"Modernity" is the term typically used to describe the West's transition from a Christian to a so-called "secular" culture and society, though in fact it represented the replacement of one religious foundation with another, the religion of Humanism.[9] Since the replacement of Christendom by atheistic Humanism in the 18th century, the fundamental moral and spiritual structure of the West has been radically transformed. Yet because it followed centuries of Christian influence, modern Humanism retains much of the moral and conceptual legacy of Christendom, though it has distorted it in fundamental ways.
Mere atheism cannot provide atonement to assuage our guilt, nor provide a purpose for human striving beyond death, both of which the human spirit craves insatiably. Atonement and the hope for a perfect world can only be satisfied by a religion. To answer that need, atheistic Humanism of the 18th century itself became a religion. Humanism retains from Christianity a goal of history, a "millennium" of earthly peace and justice which history "bends toward." To replace the atonement found in Christ’s substitutionary death, it produced a form of atonement through social activism, which invariably included the desire to destroy existing society and replace it with another.[10]
Innate depravity, now without the controlling influence of Christian natural law, the innate human desire for a perfect society, and the psychic need to be justified or righteous combined to produce the conditions for the emergence of an especially virulent version of socialism. The hallmarks of modern socialism will be described below, but they include the rejection of the present social order for one of perfect peace and justice, based solely on human equality. Modern socialism goes by many names, including communism, Marxism, the Left, Progressivism, and beginning in the late 20th century, identity politics, and critical race, gender, and queer theory.[11] One might think of a family tree, with the original ancestor as socialism proper, and the various branches being the ways socialism has evolved in the modern West. What goes under the heading of "the Left" are expressions of a root socialist ideology. But because of the West's power, especially, its cultural, military, and technological superiority to other cultures, modern Western socialism has spread throughout the world.
Modern socialism grew slowly at first, although its ideas, especially, its desire to destroy the existing order, and its atomistic individualism that divorces the individual from all natural duties and relationships, contributed to the French Revolution. Its growth greatly accelerated in the late 19th and 20th centuries after a period of conservative reaction.[12]By the late 1970s, most of mankind was under some form of socialism, including the Soviet Union (the greatest land mass), China (until very recently the most populous country), Eastern and Central Europe, North Korea, Cuba, and various African countries. Modern Israel began as a socialist country, though it was far more democratic than is typically the case, and its overt socialism didn't last.[13] Even with the fall of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe, socialist political parties as well as socialistically-inclined international institutions continue to exert enormous influence in all Western countries, and are frequently in power, including in the US, where an explicitly socialist candidate, Bernie Sanders, came close to receiving the Democratic Party's nomination for President in in 2016 and 2020. And though she currently is embracing more moderate policies in the election season, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has supported socialist policies in the past, such as state absorption of health care and more recently, price controls. Socialist parties either govern or have a powerful influence on leading "G7" nations such as Canada, England, France, and Germany.
The modern period has been dominated by socialist ideas, especially, "equality." Inequality in whatever form it takes is the socialist definition of "injustice," rather than natural law's version, which is to give each person his due, which is compatible with wealth or social inequality. On a socialist understanding, "equality" is strict equality of outcome, that is, all have the same thing in fact. One sees this most clearly in policies associated with affirmative action, which the Supreme Court recently ruled unconstitutional in college admissions, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, in which the mere fact that there are more men or more Whites in a field or position is viewed as ipso facto the result of oppression and discrimination, and so must be corrected through criteria based not on competence, but upon race, ethnicity, or gender.
Conservative resistance to socialism tends to be halting, piecemeal, and temporary, as we see following the presidencies of Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes. And as is frequently observed, the policies of the Republican Party, supposedly the non-socialistic conservative party, have gravitated to the left of where they were even 15-20 years ago. The latest casualty is the Party's opposition to abortion, which has been greatly moderated for the coming election, and prior to that, its opposition to same-sex marriage vanished. Clearly, it is exceedingly difficult to stand athwart history and yell "Stop!" The trajectory of socialism is difficult even to slow down.
Nevertheless, the resistance to socialist ideology remains powerful in the West, ironically, especially among the "Proletariat," the working class. Roughly half the electorate in the US is anti-socialist or "reactionary." Some recent European elections appear to be in part a repudiation of internationalism, if not socialism per se, though the two go hand-in-hand.
And the most powerful voting bloc opposed to socialism, at least in the US, is indeed the Church. This is because the natural law moral commitments of the Church are opposed to socialist ideology. However, church leaders often succumb to the enormous cultural and financial incentives to concede socialist assumptions.[14]
Defining Socialism: Shafarevich's Analysis
Following the research of Igor Shafarevich, the key components of the socialist phenomenon are surprisingly consistent:
The rejection of the existing social structure, specifically, private property, in favor of a future society in which all are equal, and thus are happy, and true justice reigns.
While the original source of the adage, "To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs" is disputed, socialist activism is typically willing to suspend common moral precepts such as "Do not lie" or "Do not steal" to achieve what it views as justice. This includes a willingness to condone enormous human suffering and death for the end goal of a perfect society.
A standard feature of modern socialism is its internationalism. This is a consequence of its millenarian insistence that there will be a day of fully equitable peace and justice for all humanity, requiring of course an elite set of policymakers independent of democratic control. This will only be possible if national borders are suspended or porous.
Hostility toward traditional forms of religion, especially, Christianity.
In the US, Christian natural law has gone from being the dominant culture ("positive world"), to being but one of many options in a pluralistic society ("neutral world"), to being deeply offensive to all sensitive and well-meaning people ("negative world"), the equivalent in the mind of Progressives to the KKK or Nazism.[15] This development follows precisely the pattern described by Groen van Prinsterer. In both modern Humanism and socialist ideology,
...the state is atheistic. Within certain limits religion may sometimes be tolerated and protected as useful and indispensable, but the state itself is not subject to its authority. The expression la loi est athée, the law is atheistical, is the slogan of public authority.[16]
However, the "neutral world" of tolerance of religion is typically short-lived. Religion is the source of morality, that is, natural law, that preserves the very civic order the overturning of which is the goal of revolution.
Given the connection of religion and morality with politics, the zeal to destroy authority will be accompanied by an eagerness to destroy the faith, and the Revolution will be animated with a spirit from hell as it persecutes religion and virtue.[17]
The abolition of the family, the rejection of chastity, and the promotion of "free love" or non-marital sexuality.
The attack on the generative family and monogamous sexuality is ultimately an attack on human nature. Once sexuality is separated from monogamous marriage, the inevitable result is abortion, vasectomy, surrogacy for homosexuals, and the dissolution of the meaning of marriage, which of course is the goal. The attack on marriage began with the loosening of the bonds of marriage through "no-fault divorce," and was greatly exacerbated by government welfare going only to single parents. It has now taken the form of same-sex marriage. The separation of sex from biology and childbearing led inevitably to the reductio ad absurdum of transgender ideology. It is hardly surprising that with the withering attacks on marriage and family, US births have now fallen below the replacement rate.
It goes almost without saying that removing "oppressive" cultural and moral restrictions on sex is thrilling and liberating to the young as well as to those with non-heterosexual desires, and easily generates a significant political following in a confused society. Political support for abortion rights may have begun as a means to escape the consequences of "free love," but due to the religious nature of socialism, and the atomistic understanding of the individual who has no natural obligations,[18] the right to abortion has now taken on the characteristics of cultish obsession.
The absolute insistence on equality.
In socialism, all forms of inequality are oppressive, and so inequality in any form must be eliminated from human society, whether economic, sexual, racial, ethnic, but also of birth, such as inherited status. As socialism has developed in the West, the absolute insistence on equality has been expressed through the Oppressor/Oppressed distinction, that is, that one is either an Oppressor or one of the Oppressed. In classical Marxism, the Oppressor is the Bourgeoisie, and the Oppressed is the Proletariat. In more recent versions of socialism, the Oppressor is white, male, heterosexual, or Christian (or all of the above), and the Oppressed is a racial minority, a woman (or transgender person), a non-heterosexual (non-cisgender), or a non-Christian.
To Shafarevich's analysis, I would add two additional characteristics:
Statism, or the absorption of non-state institutions by the state.
Because socialism must oppose natural, organic institutions and hierarchies, it requires enormous coercive power. Only the state, with its courts, bureaucracies, police, and soldiers, can bring to bear the necessary force upon the citizenry to institute socialist policies. With the power to tax and to defer taxes, the state has a powerful financial carrot-and-stick to generate compliance, and also to compensate citizens for the loss of natural institutions, such as by rewarding those who abandon marriage with welfare and health care for their children.[19]
Clearly, however, the control of language and the suppression of free speech is currently the primary weapon in the socialist arsenal. Orwell's famous depiction in 1984 of the chilling distortion of language in socialist tyranny has proved prophetic for our current era, with campus speech codes, requirements to endorse gender identity through the use of preferred pronouns, the attack on independent media such as Elon Musk's X, and police investigation of citizens who post "insulting or abusive" material.
The aiding and abetting of individualism.
The more the "individual" is isolated from natural, organic practices and institutions, the more dependent he is on the state, and consequently, the more malleable he is to its socialist blandishments. Thus, it's in the interest of socialist statism to remove or break down any and all natural attachments to a person's place of birth, his ancestry, his family, etc., unless of course these can be appropriated for the Oppressor/Oppressed distinction. The pervasive use of social media contributes to the socialist phenomenon, since social media enable the circumvention of the natural boundaries of family, place, and nation, and so reinforce the "atomistic" individual.
Detecting Socialism
Some policies can sound "socialistic," but are relatively innocuous, such as calls to reduce extreme disparities in school funding or health care. There is also a danger that careless overuse dilutes the meaning of the term "socialism," e.g., by calling the postal service or state universities "socialistic."[20] The same policy, such as care for the environment, can be supported by Scripture and by some pagan religions. Many Christians have been surprised to find that their opposition to gender identity is shared by TERFs, or "trans-exclusionary radical feminists." So we have to be careful that we don't condemn a policy just because of its association with a dangerous ideology. Far more significant is whether a premise behind the policy assumes an ideology that is antithetical to Christian natural law.
Five criteria for detecting socialist ideology are the following:
1) Does the person suggest that injustice is "systemic" without adequate evidence, for instance, without citing legal discrimination based upon race? Does he assume that human depravity is the result of the fundamental design of society, and not the human heart? Does he mean by "systemic injustice" the mere presence of inequality, though there are no legal impediments to success?
2) Does the person imply that inequality is inherently unjust, e.g., "It's not fair that some schools don't have computers in the classroom!" or "It's not fair that some health care plans are far more comprehensive!" Is the implication that the remedy for such inequality is state absorption and redistribution of health care?
3) Does the person suggest that the generative, one-male-and-one-female family is outdated, or that new, more inclusive definitions of "family" or "marriage" are needed?
4) Does the person advocate or approve policy in ways that imply statism, or government absorption of the private sphere, such as transitional therapies for children identifying as the opposite sex without parental consent?
5) Finally, to attain its millenarian aspirations, equality for all humanity, the major obstacle to a socialist utopia is traditional national borders. Does the person advocate an open border policy to achieve better income distribution and equality of opportunities among First and Third World countries, ignoring the deleterious impact such a policy could have on our own citizens?
To conclude: Regardless of who wins in November, the Church cannot assume that the coming election will settle the question as to whether this or any country will move in a socialist direction. Socialist ideas often sound great until they're put into practice, so a well-functioning democracy can overturn socialist advances. Nevertheless, socialism in one form or another is likely here to stay, if for no other reason than that it is perennially attractive to those who don't understand its implications or its history, and especially, those who do not find atonement through the Cross. The question rather is whether the Church will be able to resist it.
[1] Representative titles include Joshua Mitchell, American Awakening (Encounter), 2020; Douglas Groothius, Fire in the Streets (Salem Books), 2022; Christopher F. Rufo, America's Cultural Revolution (HarperCollins), 2023; Neil Shinvi and Pat Sawyer, Critical Dilemma (Harvest House), 2023. Yasha Mounks, The Identity Trap (Penguin), 2023.
[2] Groen van Prinsterer, Unbelief and Revolution (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2018), 178.
[3] Much of the confusion surrounding natural law is due to attempts to isolate natural law from the Christian religion. Christianity and natural law are mutually supportive (cf. Rom. 1: 19-20; 2:14-16). However, natural law alone is weak and ambiguous without the support of Scripture. Thus, as modernity arose, modern assumptions initially redefined then undermined natural law.
[4]Two important sources of my view of Humanism as an alternative religion to Christianity are the thought of Groen van Prinsterer (op cit), and also Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction (Wheaton, IL: Crossway), 1990, esp. Chapter Two, "Idols of Humanity".
[5] Joshua Muravchik, Heaven on Earth: the rise and fall of socialism (Encounter, 2019), 359.
[6] Two major works focusing on this phenomenon are Helmut Schoek's Envy (Liberty Fund), 1966; and Max Scheler, Ressentiment (Delhi, India: Grapevine India Publishers), 2023. The literature in support of what is called "anti-racism" is designed to generate guilt in Whites to encourage the adoption of socialist premises. See Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Anti-Racist (New York: One World), 2019; Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility (Boston: Beacon Press), 2018. Joshua Mitchell explains the rise of identity politics in terms of this dynamic (op cit). The Matt Walsh documentary Am I Racist? reveals how Whites are subject to cultlike guilt manipulation and atonement-through-repentance by "anti-racist" white and black activists. In the film, several activists imply that the only way to remove racism is through wealth redistribution, and at least one speaks of destroying the current social order, both of which are hallmarks of modern socialism.
[7] John Self, "Socialism", in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy (Blackwell, 1995), 338.
[8] I draw here on the work of Igor Shafarevich (d. 2017), the influential Russian mathematician. I consider his The Socialist Phenomenon one of the best analyses available on the history and nature of socialism. Igor Shafarevich, The Socialist Phenomenon (Gideon House Books), 2019.
[9] This is the thesis of Groen van Prinsterer's Unbelief and Revolution, viz., that modernity represents a "revolution" which, beginning from "unbelief," led to the creation of a new "pseudo-religion," in the words of Harry Van Dyke, op cit, 14. This thesis is highly compatible with the work of Francis Schaeffer, especially, in his Escape from Reason (Downers Grove: IVP), 1968.
[10] The need for works to atone for one's sins, which is obviated in biblical Christianity through the work of Christ, seems to make a person or institution more open to socialism. This helps explain why former Jews, Catholics, and Protestants, and their non-revelation-based "liberal" versions are attracted to socialism.
[11] Few scholars separate these manifestations entirely, though some, such as Shinvi and Sawyer, believe they should not be closely associated, especially in dialogue with adherents of what they refer to as "contemporary critical theory." Yascha Mounk believes the "identity synthesis," otherwise known as "identity politics," bears only superficial resemblance to Marxism. See Shinvi and Sawyer, op cit, 62; and Yascha Mounk, op. cit., 287f.
[12] The second sentence of the 1847 Communist Manifesto speaks to this resistance, viz., "All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies."
[13] Muravchik, op. cit., "The Kibbutz Goes to Market", 335f.
[14] Cf. Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale (HarperCollins), 2024.
[15] Aaron Renn, Living in the Negative World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan), 2024.
[16] Van Prinsterer, op. cit., 159.
[17] Ibid, 152.
[18] I refer here to pro-abortion arguments that treat the woman's child as if it is a total stranger, and even make analogies between an unwanted child and total strangers, or even aliens from outer space.
[19] A local friend who has long-term experience with government relief agencies tells me that all the incentives are toward coaxing the individual away from any sort of independence from the state. When one of her children with special needs required additional health care, she was told matter-of-factly by a state social worker to simply divorce her husband and the father of her child, which would free up additional funding.
[20] Not long after the election of Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson came to the campus of the state university where I teach, and announced to his audience that we were all socialists because state universities just are a manifestation of socialism.