According to Dort the Light of Nature is not enough.

[PuritanCovenanter]

Canons of Dort,
Third and Fourth Heads of Doctrine.
Article 4

There remain, however, in man since the fall, the glimmerings of natural light, whereby he retains some knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the difference between good and evil, and discovers some regard for virtue, good order in society, and for maintaining and orderly external deportment. But so far is this light of nature from being sufficient to bring him to a saving knowledge of God, and to true conversion, that he is incapable of using it aright even in things natural and civil. Nay, farther, this light, is such as it is, man in various ways renders wholly polluted, and holds it (back) in unrighteousness; by doing which becomes inexcusable before God.

I am trying to wrap my head around the idea of Natural law. If the light of nature is not sufficient in natural and civil things, where does our discernment and foundation come from concerning civil government? To Where or Whom shall we go? I am not referring to salvation as much as I am trying to apply this to law and government. Maybe I shouldn't interpret Dort in that light.

Does anyone know of a good commentary on this portion of the Canons of Dort?

Also, If it is just glimmerings of this light of Nature, ie differences between good and bad, just how do we as civilians or civil authorities determine what that good and bad is? How defined is? Where does it come from? What is the quantity of this light? How do we determine the quantity and quality of it?

 

[Semper Fidelis]

I think Abraham Kuyper has a superb illustration to get at what has been corrupted in the light of nature:

When the captain of a man-of-war in a naval engagement betrays his king and raises the enemy's flag, he does not first damage or sink his ship, but he keeps it as efficient for service as possible, and with all its armament intact he does the very reverse of what he ought to do. " Optimi coruptio pessima!" says the proverb of the wise— i.e., the greater the excellency of a thing, the more dangerous its defection. If the admiral of the fleet were to choose which of his ships should betray him, he would say : " Let it be the weakest, for defection of the strongest is the most dangerous." It is true in every sphere of life that the excellent qualities of a thing or being do not disappear in reversed action, but become most excellently bad.

In this way we understand man's fall. Before it he possessed the most exquisite organism which by holy impulse was directed toward the most exalted aim. though reversed by the fall, this precious human instrument remained, but, directed by unholy impulse, it aims at a deeply unholy object.

Comparing man to a steamship, his fall did not remove the engine. But as before the fall he moved in righteousness, so he moves now in unrighteousness. In fact, as fast as he steamed then toward felicity, so fast he steams now toward perdition, i.e., away from God. Hence the retaining of the engine made his fall all the more terrible and his destruction more certain. And thus we reconcile the two: that man retained his former features of excellency, and that his destruction is sure except he be born again.

It's not the basic abilities of men in other words but the fact that they use them in hostility to their Creator. A physicist can rightly predict the operation of the physical universe because his mind displays the grandeur of Him whose image he was created in. Nevertheless, unless he repent, all that glory that is in him is directed back in hostility to his Creator so that, even as he is describing things that are true as far as they go, he refuses to acknowledge that all his knowledge comes by divine revelaton and every fact is in covenant relation to the Creator of the Universe.

 

[PuritanCovenanter]

Rich,

You tied something together for me that I was wondering. I was wondering how physics played a part in this. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

So if we move from Physics to Political thought or even Philosophical inquiries, Calvin is highly critical of those who don't recognize the glory that is man (as an image bearer) in the writings of the ancient philosophers, poets, and political writers. He quotes Cicero often for instance. He recognizes that fallen man can display many excellencies because even though his talents are not being used for the glory of God, the talents reflect the excellencies of his created nature. A magistrate may even wisely govern people and be just in laws and administration though he is not a Christian. That pagan ruler, however, does not do so with an eye that what he is doing is borne out a relationship to his Creator and, in that sense, his best works are marred by the fact that he doesn't give thanks unto God for all that he does and accomplishes even if his work, on a certain level, is commendatory.

If we maintain a Biblical understanding of the nature of man then we maintain, with the Reformed, that man has lost the image of God in the narrow sense of his ethical hostility toward His Creator, but retains the image of God in a broader sense in terms of the excellencies of gifts that are in-created. I thank God, then, for the skills of the surgeon who repaired my shoulder but the same surgeon may glory in himself for he is unwilling to recognize that giftedness as arising from his being created in the image of God and owing Him worship and gratitude for those gifts.

 

[mvdm]

There is a commentary on the Canons by Feenstra. Google will supply you the link.

Note as well Calvin's commentary on Romans 1:18-23 which harmonizes with the Canon's confession on the insufficiency of this natural knowledge for ordering things "aright":

"..having forsaken the truth of God, they turned to the vanity of their own reason, all the acuteness of which is fading and passes away like vapor. And thus their foolish mind, being involved in darkness, could understand nothing aright but was carried away headlong, in various ways, into errors and delusions. Their unrighteousness was this — they quickly choked by their own depravity the seed of right knowledge, before it grew up to ripeness."

In his Institutes, you will find Calvin discuss the necessity of Scripture to act as the "spectacles" so as to read natural revelation aright, due to man's depravity.

And in line with what the Canons and the Westminster confess, Jonathan Edwards had this nice summary of the instability/insufficiency of "natural law" itself:

"It seems much the most rational to suppose that the universal law by which mankind are to be governed should be a written law. For if that rule, by which God intends the world shall be regulated and kept in decent and happy order, be not expressed in words that can be resorted to and be supposed to be expressed no other way than by nature, man’s prejudices will render it, in innumerable circumstances, a most uncertain thing. For though “it must be granted that men who are willing to transgress, may abuse written as well as unwritten laws, and expound them so as may best serve their turn upon occasion, yet it must be allowed that in the nature of the thing, revelation is a better guard than a bare scheme of principles without it. For men must take more pains to conquer the sense of a standing, written law, which is ready to confront them upon all occasions. They must more industriously tamper with their passions and blind their understandings, before they can bring themselves to believe what they have a mind to believe, in contradiction to the words of an express and formal declaration of God Almighty’s will, than there can be any pretense or occasion for, when they have no more than their own thoughts and ideas to manage. These are flexible things, and a man may much more easily turn and wind them as he pleases, than he can evade a plain and positive law, which determines the kinds and measures of his duty and threatens disobedience in such terms as require long practice and experience to make handsome salvos and distinctions to get over.” [Ditton on The Resurrection] And upon this account also, that it is fit in every case, when the law is made known, that also the sanctions, the rewards and punishments, should be known at the same time. But nature could never have determined these with any certainty. "

 

[Peairtach]

But so far is this light of nature from being sufficient to bring him to a saving knowledge of God, and to true conversion, that he is incapable of using it aright even in things natural and civil.

Maybe the framers of the Canons of Dort were meaning that regenerate men, able in the political and legal fields, studying natural revelation in the light of the godly commands and principles of special revelation would do a lot better than unconverted civil rulers.

Certainly some unconverted civil rulers have made a bigger "pigs ear" of governing than others, especially when they reject more explicitly and radically the "borrowed Christian capital" that is stored up in the political, legal, social and economic institutions of Western Christian Civilisation.

All things being equal, a converted politician should be a better politician than an unconverted one, a converted surgeon should be better than an unconverted one, etc. But all things aren't equal.