Divine Covenants and Moral Order: A Biblical Theology of Natural Law
Overview
This book addresses the old question of natural law in its contemporary context. David VanDrunen draws on both his Reformed theological heritage and the broader Christian natural law tradition to develop a constructive theology of natural law through a thorough study of Scripture. The biblical covenants organize VanDrunen’s study. Part 1 addresses the covenant of creation and the covenant with Noah, exploring how these covenants provide a foundation for understanding God’s governance of the whole world under the natural law. Part 2 treats the redemptive covenants that God established with Abraham, Israel, and the New Testament church and explores the obligations of God’s people to natural law within these covenant relationships.
Top Highlights
“I summarize Thomas’s view of nature and grace in the following way: God created human beings with a certain kind of nature, which had its own natural and proximate ends. At their creation, however, God also bestowed supernatural gifts of grace upon them, which served to elevate human nature to enable them to do works meritorious of a supernatural end, namely, the beatific vision of God.” (Page 29)
“ its conceptual clarification has proved to be immensely difficult.’1” (Page 1)
“God’s work itself cannot be understood apart from his rest, for work performed toward a historically defined goal is essentially different from work performed aimlessly and indefinitely. To be the image and likeness of God Adam must have performed his work with a historically defined goal in view. Thus the very unfolding of events in Genesis 1–3, in which human beings explicitly resemble God in being commissioned to do royal work in this world and in being brought to judicial trial, invites the conclusion that, had they been obedient, God would have proclaimed their work ‘very good’ and welcomed them into a state of rest, their work also ‘finished.’” (Pages 72–73)
“My basic argument in this chapter is that God established the postdiluvian Noahic covenant with all of creation and thus with the entire human race. By this covenant God preserves (but does not redeem) the world and maintains human beings in his image, and thereby continues to promulgate natural law. This natural law is in organic continuity with the natural law of the original creation, but as refracted through the covenant with Noah. It too is a protological natural law, in that it regulates human life in this present (nonconsummated) created order.” (Page 96)
- Title: Divine Covenants and Moral Order: A Biblical Theology of Natural Law
- Author: David VanDrunen
- Series: Emory University Studies in Law and Religion
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Print Publication Date: 2014
- Logos Release Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Christianity and law; Law (Theology); Natural law › Religious aspects--Christianity
- ISBNs: 9780802870940, 0802870945
- Resource ID: LLS:DVNCVNNTSNTRLLW
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T23:25:46Z