The Folly of Biblicism, Part 3: The Consequences of Spurning Nature

 

Part 1: The Authority of Natural Revelation

Part 2: The Necessity of Supernatural Revelation

 

Introduction

The first two sections of this series display the authority of natural revelation and qualify its authority with a statement of the necessity of supernatural revelation. God reveals many facts and duties to us through His world, but we can achieve the joy of man’s desiring only through His Word. However, much more can be said about the former’s necessity, particularly in the context of demonstrating the absurdity of an overreliance upon special revelation. Too many Christians today require a kinist to prove his views entirely and solely from Scripture, notwithstanding the obviousness of racial realism from nature. The biblicist might take Isaiah 8:20 out of context, asserting that one’s racial views must be acquired and supported by an investigative excursion “to the law and the prophets,” replying to your appeals to crime statistics that “there is no light in them.”

This is foolishness. It presupposes an idolatrous aggrandizement of Scripture, utterly disregarding God’s voice as proclaimed in nature: the authority of natural revelation refutes the biblicist. Though the first part of this series establishes nature’s authority to a degree, in order to better proclaim its indispensability, I intend to show the many baneful consequences of rejecting its voice. Any Christian holding to a number of basic doctrines, including the authority of special revelation, must by implication affirm the great authority of natural revelation. Though a cursory use of the senses should morally oblige any functioning mind to the concept of nature’s authority, this obligation will be more firmly impressed by a reductio ad absurdum directed against the biblicist.

Scriptural References to Natural Revelation

In the first place, it would be important to see explicit scriptural references to natural revelation. Psalm 19 is generally known as the main passage supporting the doctrine of natural revelation. Its language depicting God Himself behind His natural revelation is crucial to understand the authority of nature:

¹ The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
² Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
³ There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.
⁴ Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world (vv. 1-4a).

St. Paul also speaks of the religious duties incumbent upon man through God’s creation:

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, ¹⁹ because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse (Rom. 1:18-20).

Besides stating that such weighty and momentous attributes as God’s own deity and omnipotence are communicated through nature, Paul additionally condemns lesbianism as being “against nature” in v. 26. Such moral infractions as sodomy and lesbianism not only are forbidden due to scriptural injunction, but are themselves contrary to nature. There is a moral quality to the nature of such acts, and through our own God-created faculties, we understand them to be vilely immoral. We can recognize this moral quality of the acts of homosexuality independently of Scripture, for they are “against nature.”

Further expanding on this notion of gender distinction, Paul explicitly speaks of what nature reveals concerning masculinity and femininity:

Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him?

Christians could not ask for a more obvious reference to nature’s authority; nature is here described as a teacher of information concerning gender and hair.

Now, the question must be asked: if nature can serve as an independent source of information on these issues, then why not on race as well? If natural revelation is entirely affirmed by these few Scriptures, then how can Christians avoid the implication that racial realism is the inevitable conclusion? The alternatives are for believers either to recognize the authority of natural revelation and its concomitant racial realism, or to shut their eyes to any and all information nature teaches about anything. And if the biblicist wishes to accept scriptural authority, Scripture itself commands him to accept nature’s authority as well.

A Possible Objection

Against this argument, the biblicist might claim that while simple tasks like walking your dog can depend solely on natural revelation (e.g. knowing where the leash is, knowing how to avoid oncoming traffic, etc.), doctrines as “big” or important as racial realism still require verses to believe. He might say that when trying to assert that some act is a sin, like miscegenation, the kinist clearly has to provide biblical support: the more important a doctrine is, the more it needs to be contained in Scripture. (I suspect this is the reason biblicists incessantly request Bible verses proving that whites and blacks are different. If the words “white race” and “black race” are not in Scripture, then they are not viable categories, according to them.) But this would be presumptuous on his part to say, and the apostle would likely respond, “Does not even nature itself teach you that race is real?” It is a plain matter of fact that nature teaches racial realism; and to blindly presume that it is the type of doctrine which, to be believed, must have scriptural support is utterly foolish.

Moreover, the biblicist’s assumption that racial realism needs to be revealed in Scripture exists only due to the inordinate gravity and solemnity granted to multiculturalism today. In a properly functioning society, race would not be an issue often discussed, both because there would be minimal interracial conflict from the society’s ethnic homogeneity, and because we all would just assume that race was real. But in our modern empire, to say a naughty word starting with “n” is the new way to transgress the third commandment, and to speak up for white interests is a satanic expression of pride and malice. It is only because of this idolatrous inversion of divine order that race is so important today: if cultural Marxism were not the zeitgeist, it would not nearly be argued as much. The fact that our society is insane does not change any principles governing the modes of revelation by which we acquire facts and duties. Nature is therefore a legitimate and independent source of data concerning race.

Consequences of Denying Nature’s Authority

Though nature’s authority can be accepted on the basis of scriptural claims, nature’s dominion is likewise evident when we consider the baneful and absurd consequences of denying natural revelation. The first of these is the (somewhat obvious) effect upon natural religion and natural theology. Though I gave evidence in the previous post that natural religion and natural theology glorify God by exalting His claims over the created order, providing confirmatory warrant for various claims God might have specially revealed (such as His existence and providence), this enterprise would be wiped out by consistent biblicism. If the biblicist wishes to deny the dictates of natural revelation on race, instead closing his eyes and requesting nothing but Bible verses, he must also deny God’s sovereignty over natural religion and natural theology.

Some will not find that consequence too disturbing, so I will continue. A debasement of natural revelation destroys theonomy, or the application of God’s law to society. The central task of theonomy is to take the moral core of various laws as they are stated in Scripture and to apply them to our own particular circumstances. Using more technical terminology, theonomy involves grasping the general equity of biblical law and discerning the law’s particular equity for our own society.¹ (A common example of this is Deuteronomy 22:8—the law requiring fences on houses in Israel is generally based on the moral principle, or general equity, of residential safety. The application of this principle in our own society, or particular equity, might include banisters on stairways or perhaps baby locks.) But in order to appropriately discern a law’s particular equity, we must necessarily have cognitive access to various factors of natural revelation, lest we apply the moral principle to nothing at all. In fact, going beyond theonomy—for those readers who might see the implication against theonomy as a good thing—this biblicism is destructive of all ethics whatsoever. Barring the exhaustive codification of every decision we must ever make in every possible situation, we have to use our own practical wisdom to properly apply the principles of God’s law to our own circumstances. If we have but a merely abstract understanding of moral principles (e.g. “Thou shalt not commit adultery”), without any knowledge of particular facts around us (e.g. “This woman is not my wife”), then we could never obey the simplest of commandments. A full-fledged commitment to natural revelation is needed for ethics. But to eternally request Bible verses for understanding what is evident from nature is to implicitly reject all these fundamental functions of natural revelation. If the biblicist wants to be consistent in his denigration of nature, he must incinerate all of morality.

But it gets even worse: as might be obvious, all the empirical findings of science would be swiftly overturned by a rejection of natural revelation. If natural revelation is rejected as an independent source of information, whose claims do not need to be supplemented by biblical revelation to be rightly believed, then all of science is thrown out. But to come to such a conclusion is essentially to remove all barriers God has erected in His world against raging idolaters, whose fanciful views of reality would contradict the deliverances of true science. Even the crowd believing in gender as a social construct would be exonerated by this remission of nature! This is clearly an unacceptable consequence, which should lead us to loathe biblicism.

Conclusion

The next time an anti-kinist asks you, reader, to provide a verse proving that race is real, direct him here. The perpetual verse-requesting method of the alienist—where he asks for verses towards which he will inevitably be annoyingly and irrationally skeptical—is simply a manifestation of this odious biblicism. Such a neglect of nature can involve contempt for nature’s God, and should therefore be avoided by all those claiming to be Christians.

To put this differently, if an alienist asks you to provide a verse or two proving kinism, tell him that instead of asking, “Chapter and verse?” he should be asking, “Why do you believe that to be true?” All truth is God’s truth, and all of nature bears the authority of nature’s God. While Scripture should be upheld as perfectly inerrant, investigations of natural revelation should not be discounted as unworthy. Indeed, such a denigration of nature is one reason why the modern church cares about ridiculously in-depth studies into topics like biblical poetry, all while congregants are entirely ignorant of real and pressing issues today, like race and cultural Marxism. This should not be the case. God reveals Himself in nature, and therefore we should exalt it.

Given the clarity which natural revelation provides on the issue of race, biblicists should not accuse kinists of hating Scripture for their desire to direct the battleground of kinism more to natural-revelation issues like crime statistics and history. While certain doctrines obviously need to have their warrant from the Bible, such as justification by faith, in this particular case nature is rather clear; and if it is easier to distort scriptural teachings for this topic, then it is eminently reasonable for the kinist to wish to center this debate largely on matters of natural revelation. Scripture does support kinism, but nature does as well—perspicuously. And if the biblicist wishes to reject the kinist’s appeal to natural revelation, simply because it is natural revelation, then he must accept the full consequences of such rejection. He must accept all the implications involved in spurning nature, which ultimately is destructive of our religion.

In conclusion, the believer can accept the full authority of natural revelation, including racial realism and all its implications, or he can abandon absolutely foundational beliefs. These are the choices of the race-denier.

 

Part 4: The Interconnection of Natural and Supernatural Revelation

 

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