What is the ultimate standard of law to which a civil government is accountable, and how is that standard known?
The ultimate standard of law for civil government is, ultimately, the moral law of God. Without God’s moral law as the foundation for legal deliberation, civil law descends into an exercise of pragmatism or positivism, neither of which can withstand the corrosive effects of human autonomy, relativism, and subjectivism. God’s moral law is known through two media: general revelation and special revelation. General revelation morality and special revelation morality are the same in substance, but disclosed in different modes. Each mode of revelation has a means fitted to its end—general revelation binds the human conscience to God’s moral law through the witness of conscience and creation. This is distinct from special revelation, which awakens and binds the regenerate conscience to God’s revealed law.
God’s moral standard is embedded in the created order and discernible through the function of the conscience and the operation of reason. Though darkened by sin, the Reformed tradition affirms that the light of reason is not extinguished. By common grace, magistrates, governments, and all citizens remain fully accountable to the whole counsel of God’s moral law—both as it is revealed in creation and as it is declared in Scripture. Yet, because of human rebellion and unregeneracy, they will suppress and distort the demands of special revelation, even while being judged by it. This explains why civil governance is ordinarily grounded in the moral knowledge available through general revelation, without denying its ultimate harmony with special revelation.
All legislators inevitably operate from stated or unstated metaphysical commitments, and so can the government—though only in a manner consistent with its God-ordained design and end. The state’s unique task is to execute preservative justice in keeping with creation order realities, not to advance redemptive glorification that is the province of ecclesiastical judgment.
That the state does not legislate under the banner of one specific religion does not negate the fact that every governing judgment draws from some ultimate metaphysical commitment lodged in the human conscience. Because the government is comprised of a mixed body, its officeholders will differ on ultimate metaphysical foundations. Yet disagreement cannot extend to certain fundamental moral ends known by general revelation that are necessary for civic order to function correctly. All this means is that legislators may hold divergent views about God, but they should agree on basic creation-order norms that God has revealed in creation—such as the sanctity of life, the reality of male and female, the nature of marriage and family, and the demands of rightly authorized justice. Where even the most basic standards of creation order are rejected, like in our own culture, God’s moral law is blasphemed and the common good severely crippled—abortions occur, sexual deviancy is celebrated, the definition of “rights” and “dignity” becomes pliable and useless, and the general welfare of society declines overall. The futility of sin is evident in that striving against God’s revelation in creation order, the pangs and cries of a broken society are evidence of our deviation from it.
“Natural law” is the standard by which moral reasoning occurs in the absence of agreement about special revelation. Yet, natural law is not a mere concession; it is both tied to our nature and the default grounds for moral debate in light of the Genesis 3 antithesis.
Natural law is that rule or standard of conduct that accords with man’s created nature. It is not arbitrary or extrinsic; rather, it is intrinsic to what man is. It embeds man’s nature with the knowledge of God’s moral law (but not the ability to obey it). The law is woven into man’s design. It is “natural” precisely because it fits the kind of being man is. For example, God does not command human beings to fly unaided because such a command would not align with our nature. Natural law, by contrast, is fitting to man’s capabilities and vocation as a rational and moral being.
While Scripture conveys the moral law in propositional form—“Thou shalt not kill”—natural law is accessible, in principle, through reason. Man, using his natural faculties, can discern moral truths such as the wrongness of murder, theft, or adultery. He can even, through reflection on the nature of worship and piety, come to recognize duties toward God, such as worshiping God and setting aside time for worship—though the natural law alone would leave him ignorant of the identity of that God and the nature of His saving actions.
A formal definition is as follows: Natural law is the universal, immutable, and rationally accessible moral order rooted in human nature, designed by God, and directed toward man’s ultimate end. It is the law that fits man as man—rational, moral, and created in God’s image—and remains binding upon all, regardless of their religious status. The natural law is the objective moral order established by God and woven into the fabric of His creation, which reveals the moral goods toward which human beings are ordered and the moral norms that govern right and wrong. This moral order reflects the character and wisdom of the Creator and is intelligible to human reason, which, through the exercise of practical reason, discerns the basic goods conducive to human flourishing and the principles of action that lead to human excellence. Though human perception of this order is darkened by sin, reason remains capable, by God’s common grace, of perceiving its essential contours—enabling individuals and societies to distinguish good from evil and to order life toward the true, the good, and the beautiful in accord with God’s design.
As I recently wrote elsewhere, when society rejects the authority of special revelation, it will likely reject aspects of natural revelation as well, albeit not entirely. Man’s knowledge of God’s moral law is effaced but not extinguished. But in the absence of a society subscribing to special revelation, we will, by necessity, advert to natural law reasoning as the grounds for moral debate.
Some argue that the natural law is of no value since its terms are also subject to debate. However, the criticism that natural law succumbs to the “By What Standard?” test posed by theonomists overlooks the many ways in which natural law functions properly in society. Even amid protracted debates about the nature of marriage and the dignity of the unborn, traffic lights are expected to be followed, laws against theft and murder are upheld (even if inconsistently applied), society stands aghast at child abuse, and a general sense of honoring one’s obligations in society remains. Even in our sinful disobedience and inconsistency, the principles of natural law morality remain evident. The occurrence of disobedience does not vitiate the existence of the moral law. To press this point further, violations of natural law can serve to lead us back to it. The fact that society is slowly awakening from its transgender derangement is testament enough that, in fits and starts, the natural law finds a way to reassert itself.
Drawing on Calvin’s teaching on the duplex cognitio Dei and the sensus divinitatis, the paradigm of “civic theism” I have argued for elsewhere, provides a coherent framework for how a Baptist can affirm the state’s accountability to God as Creator based on general revelation. God is known by all as “Creator” but only as “Redeemer” by regenerate Christians. The state is bound to God’s decrees regarding the created order, but not to the order of redemption. In its judgment-executing capacity, the state cannot confess “Jesus is Lord” because the “state” qua “state” or “office of magistrate” qua “office of magistrate” is not an object of redemption. The vision advanced by Christian Nationalism or Theonomy strains Scriptural plausibility. When kings in Scripture confess that “Christ is Lord,” this does not imply that their kingdoms are regenerate. Psalm 2 does indeed call rulers to “kiss the Son,” but this act of homage does not alter the state’s essential nature: it remains a creation-order institution charged with the administration of public justice.
Governments, as mechanisms for political judgment, are not themselves parties to the redemptive covenant, nor are nations in their collective identity. In the New Covenant, the Kingdom of God is never identified with a government, an ethnicity, or a geographic realm. While persons within these arenas can express Kingdom values, they are not exclusive to them. Individual officeholders may be converted and may rule more justly, and entire nations may benefit from the moral leaven of the gospel saturating their boundaries (and we should hope for both). But it is a category mistake to claim that a government, in its formal capacity, can confess the Triune God. It lacks the “keys” to make such pronouncements (Matt. 16:19). Such a confession would require a perennially regenerate knowledge that civil authority, as such, does not possess and cannot perpetually enforce—unless one assumes universal regeneration in this age, which Scripture never teaches.
For this reason, a Baptist natural law perspective on church and state views this conversation through an eschatological horizon. The central hermeneutical and covenantal error of establishmentarian arguments is a failure to distinguish between the government’s accountability to God’s creational law and to God’s redemptive law—as if the obligations were symmetrical in nature and scope. Obedience to creation order is preparatory to the gospel but not synonymous with it. The state is accountable to God’s law, but that law is expressed in different forms, and the form of obligation depends on the institution in question. Since the state has no mandate to judge the inner sanctum of a person’s religious convictions, it is best left to adjudicate external realities, such as physical threats to the common good. The church adjudicates internal religious realities (Matt. 22:15-23). This is why Scripture never assigns the state to mediate redemptive rule, even though it is charged—per the Noahic mandate—with executing preservative justice.
However, as an artifact of the creation order, the state may rightly give civil acknowledgment to the religious nature and telos of man (e.g., “One Nation Under God”). I would welcome a constitutional amendment acknowledging the historical indebtedness that a nation owes to a particular religion and/or affirming the indispensable role of religion in grounding morality and sustaining ideals such as human rights.
To argue for a Baptist natural law paradigm of disestablishment is not to argue for public atheism. Faith and politics are inextricably linked because religion provides the foundation for ethics. There is nothing inconsistent with Baptist principles of church and state if a Baptist magistrate appeals to a biblically shaped conscience when advocating for a particular policy. Take marriage, for example. Such a magistrate may fully believe that marriage reflects the Christ–Church union while also demonstrating how the biblical definition of marriage aligns with natural law and supports public policy consistent with this creation order institution. Legislators may employ religious arguments in support of a policy, but those arguments should be joined with publicly accessible reasoning rather than standing alone.
What is the specific duty of the civil magistrate in relation to the Ten Commandments? Must the magistrate enforce both tables of the law, or only the second?
All people are bound to the Ten Commandments—not as stipulations of the Mosaic Covenant, but as the Decalogue’s enduring witness to the natural law, grounded in creation order and reaffirmed through the Noahic Covenant.
There is a binding general moral obligation upon all people to obey the First Table of the Ten Commandments—including the civil magistrate, though not in the civil magistrate’s capacity as civil magistrate (nor to enforce it). Neither special revelation nor natural law provides a clear principle mandating how civil authority ought to enforce obedience to the First Table. This absence, to me, suggests a principled basis for removing the First Table from the government’s purview and why, within the natural law tradition, it has been argued that the Second Table is more readily enforceable than the First. Violations of the First Table provide no self-executing clarity on how to punish those who violate it, while Second Table violations are more readily within the purview of human legislatures to determine punitive consequences.
A robust understanding of religious liberty can, in fact, advance the aims of the First Table by preserving the space for humanity’s highest duty—to worship God. The First Table itself does not mandate a particular civil enforcement mechanism, and under the New Covenant, the administration of religion is no longer joined to governing authority. Adjudication of religious matters thus shifts from the Israelite theocracy to the jurisdiction of the church. While both tables of the law bind the conscience equally, as alike expressions of God’s moral law, the practical challenge of enforcing the First Table remains.
This raises a deeper question: Should our framework for civil law and its enforcement rest primarily on the First/Second Table distinction? I would argue not. This is why I argue from a Progressive Covenantalist perspective. The Ten Commandments remain a distilled and authoritative expression of God’s moral law, but they are not a fixed civil code to be applied in toto by the magistrate. Under the New Covenant, neither church nor state stand under the Mosaic covenant as Israel did; rather, the Decalogue reflects the creation-order morality embedded in the Noahic covenant and confirmed by Christ. For this reason, its civil application must be guided by prudence. Some commandments—such as prohibitions on murder, theft, or perjury—naturally lend themselves to civil enforcement because they involve clear, external acts that threaten public justice. Others—such as the command to have no other gods—speak to the inward worship of the heart, which the state is not competent to adjudicate and which Scripture nowhere charges it to police. Prudence, therefore, governs the extent and manner of civil application: the state upholds those moral norms that preserve civic order while leaving matters of ultimate worship to the realm of conscience and the church’s ministry. This does not weaken the law’s authority; it applies the law in harmony with God’s covenantal ordering of His institutions.
How should a government operating under your view interpret the First Amendment’s religion clauses (“no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”)?
The government should not have an officially established religion. From the arguments made above, the government operates according to a general revelation metaphysic and is not competent to discern or direct religious decrees.
Religious freedom should be generally available to all religious expressions insofar as the religious expressions do not undermine the common good. For example, when a religion threatens public safety or public health, the government can restrict the exercise of religion—not ordinarily on the grounds of religious belief itself, but on the observable physical harms that result. I also believe there could be extraordinary situations where one religion’s stated dominance unambiguously threatens the established political order, and governments could take active measures to restrict it using the least restrictive means. Religious liberty is not the same as viewpoint equality; it normatively means only legal neutrality regarding religious viewpoints.
Governments and nations can pay symbolic and organic homage to religious traditions that have influenced their cultural settings without affording them official legal privilege over other religions. For example, this does not preclude the cultural or ceremonial expressions of Christianity’s historic role in shaping a nation—such as the recognition of Christmas as a federal holiday—but it does prohibit identifying the nation, in its entirety, as a legally codified “Christian nation.” Legal codification and cultural homage are distinct categories. Perhaps controversially, I do not regard the posting of the Ten Commandments in public spaces as a violation of Baptist principles on the juridical separation of church and state. While some may disagree, I believe that a nation’s organic connection to religion is an essential component of its identity and stability. For this reason, careful distinctions are crucial in these debates: a Texas bill requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools does not offend my Baptist convictions. It does not establish a formal state religion; rather, it acknowledges the undeniable historical debt the Western legal tradition owes to the Judeo-Christian worldview. A symbolic homage does not amount to a legal establishment.
To make this practical, how should a civil government legislate, if at all, on the issue of public blasphemy?
I do not support blasphemy laws in the service of protecting Christianity. However, the government can also set criteria for determining whether certain religious expressions are suitable for public expression. Let us use a recent example in Iowa of a satanic display being set up in the state capital.
Under a natural law rubric, even a non-Christian government official is capable of discerning moral excellence from moral evil (1 Pet. 2:14). Such a person can recognize that Satanic displays promote moral darkness and prurient messages. Moral evil of this nature has no legitimate claim to equal standing with moral good in the public square. Rights exist to safeguard the ability of individuals to fulfill the moral duties that conduce to human flourishing—not to shield evil for evil’s sake.
Constitutional analysis is determined through legal tests of adjudication, and no right is absolute. Constitutionalism is a social pact for agreed-upon cooperation. For good or for ill, depending on the question at hand, every constitutional order is guided by some explicit or implicit limiting principles. In the event of questions about granting public display of particular religious expressions like Satanism, I would ask the following questions:
- Does the belief system fit within a traditional understanding of religion (e.g., is it theistic)?
- Does it possess a history and tradition that bear some connection to the nation’s own cultural and historical heritage?
- Is its practice widespread within the nation?
- Would a reasonable observer understand the religious expression as advancing some notion of civic or moral good?
- Conversely, would that same reasonable observer see it as serving a prurient or purely provocative purpose? In other words, does the display possess any redeeming moral or cultural value, or is it merely intended to offend?
- Does America have an established tradition of permitting sacrilegious displays in government buildings?
- Is the asserted belief sincerely held?
Whether the principles laid out above constitute a “blasphemy law” I will leave to others to determine. What a Baptist-natural law position allows us to do is draw careful distinctions that are essential for clarifying the limits of constitutional principles that align with basic principles of moral goodness and moral evil, principles that I believe remain intelligible and discernible, however imperfectly perceived. At the same time, to say that Satan worship has no place in a government building is not to say that Satan worshippers should be arrested, executed, or exiled. Opposing the presence of Satanic displays in public institutions does not entail advocating for police raids on private gatherings of those who hold such beliefs.
Conclusion
Civil government is never free from the judgment of God. Whether rulers acknowledge Him or not, their authority is derivative, and their task is defined by the moral law of God. That law, rooted in His unchanging character, is revealed in two distinct but harmonious ways: general revelation, which binds the conscience of all people by the testimony of creation and reason, and special revelation, which binds the regenerate by the witness of Scripture. While both revelations speak truth, they address different ends: general revelation orders life in the present age; special revelation directs the redeemed toward the age to come. Civil magistrates, by virtue of their office, are accountable to the Creator through the realities of creation order—not to the redemptive administration that belongs to the church. This distinction preserves the state’s God-ordained purpose: to administer preservative justice within the boundaries of what God has made known to all, while avoiding the theological overreach that belongs to Christ’s Kingdom. In our present disordered moment, where even the basic moral givens of creation are contested, the recovery of this Baptist natural law framework is essential for securing both public justice and ordered liberty.
The debate over church and state will always be freighted with theological freight and political urgency. Yet if the Baptist tradition teaches us anything, it is that the integrity of both institutions depends on maintaining the line God Himself has drawn between them. Civil government is not an agent of redemption; it is a servant of justice under the Noahic mandate, bound to the Creator’s moral order. This does not require a naked public square or a pretense of metaphysical neutrality. It does, however, require prudence—a refusal to collapse creation and redemption into one task, a recognition that law must be publicly accessible, and a commitment to protect the moral space in which people may fulfill their highest duty to worship God.
Natural law provides the shared moral grammar for this task, even in a fractured and unbelieving age. To affirm disestablishment is not to advocate public atheism; it is to uphold the creational order in which true religion can flourish without coercion. Such a vision both guards liberty and honors the Lord who rules overall. In seeking to recover it, we work not for utopia, but for the ordered peace in which the gospel may advance freely until Christ returns. I have never stated what I am about to state: If there is any Christian tradition that should partake of the natural law tradition, it is Baptists. We are people of the Bible, but nothing in our tradition should confine the Bible’s role for public ethics to the margins or catacombs. What a whole-Bible approach to public ethics requires is a publicly accessible means of explaining and applying the moral coherence of Bible-based ethics in the public sphere. That vehicle is the natural law. The Baptist tradition, at its best, should affirm a substantive role for natural law in shaping our approach to public ethics in general and church-state relations in particular. To uphold a universally binding, non-sectarian ethic rooted in the reality of God’s created order—while also maintaining the institutional separation He has ordained—is to operate, consciously or not, within the framework of natural law. Far from being an impenetrable philosophical enterprise, natural law is the inescapable consequence of a biblical ethic that seeks public recognition without collapsing into sectarian narrowness or entangling the church in the state’s affairs.
This article originally appeared at G3 on August 26, 2025.
