Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow (About The Rebellion Against Nature)

A Surgical Rape of Nature

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

Over the years I have expressed in various ways my great debt to The Abolition of Man. This book was published as a non-fiction companion to my favorite novel, which is That Hideous Strength. Every year that goes by simply reinforces Lewis’s prescience.

In this post, I want to summarize The Abolition of Man in a paragraph, then take issue with a passing reference that Lewis makes near the end of his argument, and then go on to make some observations about Lewis’s profound insight into the precise nature of the modern rebellion.

Lewis begins with the modern effort to debunk statements of value, showing that this debunking spirit is a universal corrosive. It will eat out any container you try to store it in. He shows how our brand of relativism is arbitrary and capricious, tending to select one aspect of traditional morality, and absolutizing it randomly over against the rest. The result of this rejection of the Tao is something that Lewis calls “men without chests.” They have no fixed system of value and so it is that they are adrift in a blind and stupid cosmos.

Now at the same time we are embracing an inchoate hot mess as an ethical system, we are simultaneously making tremendous advances in the technocratic sciences, such that more and more of nature is coming under our authority.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Look! Girls!

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

So let me tell you a little bit about my recent reading, which will then help you understand where the following comes from. I recently listened through all C.S. Lewis’s Essays, and have now listened to most of The Abolition of Man (again). I am currently reading God Is Not a Story by Murphy (which has made me think yet again that perhaps all really smart people ought to be locked up), and now I just read Mark Horne’s short essay on natural law here.

Mark wonders what good natural law offers us if an entire civilization (ours) can miss out on what that law is saying with regard to something as basic as the creational distinction between male and female. In the wake of Obergefell and Jenner messing with his pronouns, Mark finds natural law “much less credible” than it was previously.

A couple of responses to this concern spring to mind, and then I would like to go on to offer something else as food for thought.

First, we ought not measure the efficacy of anything by whether or not unbelievers deny the efficacy of it.

The Future of "Homosexual Marriage"

Arguments and Reasoning That Prove Far Too Much

When homosexual "marriage" became legally recognised there were tears of joy.  At last true love would be acknowledged and respected.  Christians and others were not amused.  They prophesied that before long the state would be recognising all sorts of relationships as marriage--thereby making the institution eventually empty of significance, meaning, and power.

Nah.  Don't be stupid, crowed the foolish and naive.  Slippery slope arguments lack logical force.

But there are a couple of little devils in this particular slippery slope that give it both logical force and societal potency.  In the case of homosexual "marriage" there have been been two suppressed premises driving the argument.  The first is that "true love" cannot be denied.  In the end, marriage in this view is the willful union of people.  Therefore, whatever may be the object of love, by virtue of its being loved, it justifies--nay demands--that society recognise the existence of a marriage, and provide legal sanction and recognition of it.  If it does not, it fails to recognise the human rights of the "true lover".

The second assumption is that marriage, like all existence, is evolving, developing and changing.  Therefore, we must expect, look for, and co-operate with the constant flux of existence in the way we recognise marriage (and all things for that matter.)

Yup.  The Christians were right.  Within just a few weeks of homosexual "marriage" being recognised by the Supreme Court of the United States, we read the following in Slate:

Proving that Guns Do Not Exist

All The World's An Evolutionist Oxymoron


Evolutionism is a contradiction in terms.  If it can be described meaningfully, it must logically be a false cosmology; if it were a true cosmology, it could never be described.  Moreover, none reading these sentences could make any sense of them.  If, however, they have meaning to the reader, evolutionism is thereby revealed to be bunkum. 

Linguist Vern Poythress explains why this is the case:

Each person who uses language relies on language rules.  Many of the rules he knows tacitly, without having them explicitly taught in a classroom.  He may not be able to formulate what the rules are, but he shows that he knows them by his usage.  For example, if he has begun to learn English, he knows that the word "banana" describes a certain kind of fruit.  He knows that "moved" is the past tense form of the verb "move."  He knows that in making a declaration, the subject precedes the verb: "The cat is on the mat."  He knows that in a question some form of helping verb or some question word precedes the subject."   "Is the cat on the mat?"  He knows that in a noun phrase with a definite article ("the"), the words occur in a certain, fixed order: "The three large cats" is acceptable, while "Large cats three this" is not.

He knows these rules even if he uses languages to deny that we can know anything, or to deny that we can know about language rules.  The rules are indispensable.  Vern Poythress, In the Beginning Was the Word.  Language--A God-Centred Approach  (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2009), p.60f.]

Evolutionism argues (using rules of language and logic) that the cosmos is ruled by no rules.  Everything is ultimately and substantially stochastic or chaotic or random.  Laws, rules, and patterns are false mirages, disconnected from reality.  Thus, evolution is compromised from the very start as being hopelessly self-contradictory.  Any evolutionist who uses language to argue the contrary or deploys logic in the attempt to establish his case represents an oxymoron.  It is as madcap as the chap who shoots his opponent with a Tikka T3 hunting rifle to prove that guns do not exist. 

Madness Replacing Reason

Indictments From the Common Lawyers

What does a Christian society look like?  What might be some of the key features of the Second Christendom when it emerges in redemptive history?  There are many.  One central feature will be the grounding of civil and criminal law upon the higher law of God.  This, of course, is not novel.  It is the way it used to be in the First Christendom.

F E Dowrick describes how biblical law (both written and inscribed in the creation itself) was deeply embedded in the English legal tradition.  He writes:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Why Nature Is Necessary

Blog and Mablog

Posted on Saturday, March 22, 2014  

By Douglas Wilson 

Let’s clear a few things out in the first paragraph. Nature is nature, which seems obvious enough, but less obvious is that nature has a nature. The grain of the natural order runs in a particular way. It is not amorphous goo that can be shaped by any volunteer demiurge that happens by. It is not an inert substance that can successfully be altered by an act of Congress, or runaway judges. I just read in the news this week that a federal judge determined that in Michigan water must now run uphill.

This why sex change operations are such a fine example of pomosexual confusion. If nature does not have a nature, then subsets of nature (that would be us) would not have a nature either. If we do not have a nature, then it cannot be possible to contradict or violate it. But if we do have a nature, as established by nature’s God, then one of the first things that rebels against that God will want to do is declare war on it.

Not only does nature have a nature, nature also has a way of instructing us about herself. We see this in the realm of sexual customs. For example, nature teaches us that long hair is a disgrace for a man, but is a woman’s glory. But this creates an interesting set of questions.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

The Nature of Natural Law

Posted on Friday, January 10, 2014  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

Yesterday I came home from the Auburn Avenue conference for pastors, which is always a grand time. One thing that happened there was this. During his talk, Jim Jordan spent some time castigating the idea of natural law, and during the Q&A I was asked about it, because I have been making friendly noises about natural law in my blog posts for a while. Am I sidling away from Van Til, what about all my friends, what gives, etc.? I answered briefly there, but have been mulling over the whole topic some more, and wanted to add a few things.

My interest in natural law comes down to one thing — which is that I want us to confess the universal authority of Jesus Christ over everyone and all things.

Now I grant that there is a form of natural law thinking that does not want to do this at all. But there is a rejection of natural law thinking that doesn’t want to do it either, and I am wanting to avoid both of those
problems. Here is how it works.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

What Plato’s Cousin Knew 

Monday, June 3, 2013
Douglas Wilson 

Theological disputes are often matters of great moment, even when those outside the dispute cannot track with what is going on. I think it was Gibbon who once displayed his ignorance by saying that the debate over homousia and homoiousia was somehow over the letter i — which is pretty similar to saying the debate between atheists and theists is over the letter "a".

But at the same time, theologians are capable of talking past each other simply because they are used to different terminology, or perhaps because they are worried about the trajectory of those who use that other terminology. Take, for example, the distinction between natural revelation and natural law.

Now before opening this particular worm can, I want to acknowledge that two positions represented by these phrases can be quite different indeed. But this is a historical fact, not a logical one. I believe the two essential positions can be collapsed into one another with 5 minutes of questions.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Broken Loose 

Culture and Politics - Sex and Culture
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, 29 April 2013

We live in a bad neighborhood, meaning this world of ours, and so this means that we have two kinds of problems. The first would be, naturally, the bad dudes roaming the neighborhood. The second problem would be those endearing but exasperating naifs living inside the house with us, who persist in leaving invitational lights on and doors unlocked. One problem is direct, and the other is indirect. One problem is assault and the other problem is failure to take the real possibility of a real assault into account.

So here is the the unlocked door. It is what W.W. Bartley called the "retreat to commitment."

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

A Fixed Given 

Sex and Culture
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, 24 April 2013


One of the reasons conservative Christians are doing poorly in the public square debates over human sexuality is that the philosophical ground has shifted under our feet over the course of the last generation or two. We are trying to fight for a different conclusion from the same ground that our adversaries have defined for us, and that is hard to do. And here is what I mean.

The apostle Paul says that homosexual behavior is contrary to nature. The words seem plain enough, but what is nature? That is where we find ourselves wandering in a labyrinth. We wander because we are refusing to read nature in the light of Scripture.

If I may make the problem stark, what is the difference between a man shaving his head, or a woman dying her hair, or a teen-ager getting braces on her teeth, or a man getting a sex change operation? All four can be cast as examples of us "tinkering with" nature.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Eleven Theses on Natural Law 

Sex and Culture
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, 05 January 2013

1. At the foundational level, natural law needs to refer what nature teaches us, and not to what any particular men have said about it. Natural law theorists are commentators on the text, and commentaries on a great text always differ among themselves. We should not make the mistake of rejecting the text because we have rejected any or even most of the commentaries.

2. Accepting the authority of natural law in the sense I am describing does not require a nature/grace dualism. That dualism is found in some of the commentaries, but not in the stars. What is nature but one vast repository of grace? And what is the grace of God but something manifested in all of His works?

Not a Shred of Respectable Evidence, Part II

 The Sovereignty of God, of Mathematics, and of Man

Deep within the bowels of the atom--where the eye of man cannot see--researchers have had to feel around the dark, as it were.  But particle physicists are not blind.  They have access to the universal language of mathematics which accurately describes and predicts how the universe works and ought to work.  This includes those parts which are so small we cannot see them; we can only see traces of them, fleeting signatures as sub-atomic particles are accelerated to travel at unbelievable speeds and crash into each other.  

The effects of the crashes tell us something about their properties and how the sub-atomic particles work.  But all along mathematics is predicting how these things will work, what will happen and what physicists should expect to find.

"Not a Shred of Respectable Evidence"

Weird, Wonderful and Inexcusable

The natural world, the universe testifies to God.  It shows His footprints and His handiwork.  This testimony is so pervasive that it takes inveterate blindness not to acknowledge it: a blindness born of contumacy and stubbornness and prejudice.  Unbelief is never about a lack of information or demonstration.  It is always the product of arrogant, stiff-necked pride.  Thus declare the Scriptures: the fool says in his heart, "There is no God" (Psalm 14: 1-3).  Unbelievers, we are told, actively suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18ff). 

What are some of the testimonies of God in His creation?  One is the universal application of mathematics.

On Holy Ground

Sacred World; Sacred History

Materialists like to portray Christians as living in an unreal, make believe world.  It's a small step from there to paint Christians as ignorant simpletons.  Uneducated rubes. 

Another (related) slur is that Christians are anti-science because they do not value the world of matter.  They are so "heavenly minded" they are of no worldly good. 

Of course these slurs are just that.  They betray a profound ignorance of that which materialists presume to criticise.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Natural Law and the Brownies

Goo-Mongers - Postmodernism
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, May 28, 2011 6:58 am

Let me see if I can do something to simplify the idea of natural law or, as I would prefer to state it, natural revelation.

A couple of boys go home after school, accompanied by a couple of their unbelieving friends. When they get to the house, they find it clean and in good order. There are some beautiful paintings on the wall, the work of the boys' mother. On the counter is a tray of brownies, still warm. This is natural law.

On the fridge is a note from mom, telling the the boys to help themselves to the brownies and, after they have done so, would they please help her out by carrying a desk upstairs, a desk she scored that morning in a yard sale. After that, they can do whatever -- study, go play ball, whatever they want to do. That is special revelation.

There are three basic ways to screw this up.

The Natural Order, And All That . . .

Seeing Things As They Truly Are

The Christian faith requires Believers to see the creation as it really is, not as it is mediated to us through the glasses of Unbelief. This means that Believers view the world through the prism of cosmic personalism--and the Person is God. Literally everything lives, moves, and has its being in God Himself.

The Enlightenment attempted a grand thought experiment of positing that the nature or the natural order was independent of God; it operated with an integrity intrinsic to itself (although the earlier Enlightenment thinkers were prepared to acknowledge the "integrity" originally came from a god, but moved rapidly to consign him to a realm of irrelevance). However, this thought experiment is definitely not what is actually true--despite the fact that it's veracity is beyond question to modern Unbelievers.

Scripture teaches that God sustains life directly, not indirectly. There is no such thing as Nature. God has not given any inherent power of development to the universe as such. . . . The idea that God wound up the universe and then let is run its course, so that there is such a thing as Nature which has an intrinsic power, is Deism, not Christianity. . . .

What we call natural or physical law is actually a rough approximate generalization about the ordinary activity of God in governing His creation. Matter, space, and time are created by God, and are ruled directly and actively by Him. His rule is called "law". God almost always causes things to be done the same way, according to covenant regularities (the Christian equivalent of natural laws), . . . . Science and technology are possible because God does not change the rules, so man can confidently explore the world and learn to work it. Such confidence, though, is always a form of faith, faith either in Nature and natural law, or faith in God and the trustworthiness of His commitment to maintain covenant regularities. James B. Jordan, Judges: God's War Against Humanism (Tyler, TX: Geneva Ministries, 1985), pp. 37,38,102

For the Christian, this means that the natural order can never be understood or interacted with accurately or properly or truthfully unless and until it is seen in the light of the transcendent Living God. The Unbeliever, however, never sees the natural order truthfully. When Shimei cursed David as David was fleeing Jerusalem, Abishai sought permission to cut off his head. David refused, on the grounds that the Lord had told Shimei to curse him. (II Samuel 16:11) Now the idea here is not that Shimei was a recipient of divine revelation, but that he was acting by the will and appointment of the Lord.

David saw the situation truthfully. Abishai saw half-truths and accordingly was distorted as to his duty and what God would have him do.