Aaron M. Schellhas July 29, 2005 Theological Ethics Dr.

Joel Biermann Book Review In his book What We Cant Not Know, J. Budziszewski provides abundant and insightful defense for natural law. His philosophical exposition of the things that are hard-wired to the mind and soul of every human being and cannot be forgotten (hence, what we cant not know) is poignant and relevant, yet very readable. While Budziszewski states right off the bat that he is a Christian, he does not let his religious affiliation intrude too much into his argument. A former atheist, he is reminiscent of C.S. Lewis, but concentrates entirely on natural law, its deconstruction in our society, and the implications for Christians and moral philosophers now, while Lewiss Mere Christianity forges much farther into Christian territory than does Budziszewski. In my opinion, there is not a questionable portion of this book, and every chapter meets and exceeds the high standards Budziszewski sets for himself. I find it incredibly helpful that he uses examples from contemporary society to make his points, and the fact that he consistently uses abortion and the death culture that is so prevalent as his quintessential foil is especially effective. Since there is so much material to explore, I will speak to a small portion of each chapter. The introduction to the book states the general condition of morality and natural law in the contemporary setting. Budziszewski contrasts times past when the norms of natural law were universally accepted and incorporated into the thought life of all with the contemporary view of self-defined morality, which creates a vacuum of ideas by which all people can be judged. The latter creates difficulties when it is applied, but ethicists and other professional thinkers propound a plethora of detours around and excuses against the absolutes contained in the natural law that

every persons conscience recognizes. I was absolutely revolted by Peter Singers utilitarian ideal that a man might have sex with an animal as long as both enjoyed it. Against this kind of relativistic ideologist, Budziszewski asserts that his real problem is denial: If he presupposes the old morality in the very act of denying it, the lesson is not that the old morality should be denied, but that he is in denial (p. 12). Through these varying shades of denial, Budziszewski, with a tip of the hat to George Orwell, attempts to restate the absolute truth that intellectuals have abolished. So what is it that we cant not know? Budziszewski enumerates several portions of natural law and notes that they very closely align with the Decalogue. However, for those who deny the existence of God, denial of the Decalogue that He gave is just as easy (or hard?). For such hard-headed people, Budziszewski describes how their feeble attempts to penetrate Gods system of absolute truth are futile. Authentic moralists connect the dots of what they know and observe to be true to paint an accurate portrait of how we should live, while poor moralists take the dots they like and force them to form the picture that they happen to fancy. Within a well-constructed dot formation that accurately portrays truth, one can more easily understand how another religion or denomination has constructed its dots because they are at least using the same dots. I think Budziszewski is really on to something when he says that it is hardest for those who dont even have dots to understand moral law, and that he hits it closest to home by saying that many contemporary thinkers have no tradition, or worse, a tradition of denial. In Chapter 2, Budziszewski explores each commandment of the Decalogue in turn, analyzing how it fits comfortably into the ideals of natural law. While this may seem a waste of ink to those of us who already understand and ascribe to the Ten Commandments, Budziszewski does a wonderful job of giving an insurmountable amount of evidence of how the Ten

Commandments reflect natural law to those who may not even acknowledge the existence of God. He is quick to point out, once he has connected the Decalogue and natural law, that the Decalogue naturally contains some commandments that are focused on God and how we are to deal with Him. An excellent example of Budziszewskis polemic against modern anti-natural lawyers is in his explanation of the Second Commandment: What empty God-talk tells us is that where there ought to be God, there is emptiness (p. 32). I also really liked the way he quoted two sociologists in his section on the Fourth Commandment to cement his point that a two-parent family is Gods design for the nurture of children. The next chapter follows up some of the ideas just presented by asking the question, could we get by with knowing less? In other words, does God absolutely need to be a part of our thought world in order to be able to stand on natural law, and what difference does it make? Budziszewski points out that some people who he calls the Second Table Project do their best to approach morality from the standpoint of using only the Second Table of the Decalogue, the Table directed toward created beings, not the Creator. Budziszewski approaches our innate knowledge of God from two angles: from natural law and from biblical revelation (which sounds pretty theologically sound to me, even though Budziszewski is not claiming to be a theologian). Under natural law, his reasons include the facts that God has given us our nature, and we could not have acquired it from any other place; that if there is no God, then natural law loses its force; that God gives order to the world, and the lack of His existence would produce an arbitrariness which the world has never experienced; and that the need of atheists and others who deny Gods existence to deny His goodness is counterproductive and an excellent sign of their denial, because Gods absence would equal goods absence. Under the argument of biblical revelation, Budziszewski sites several reasons why the Bibles principles coincide with what we cant not

know, including the facts that humans dare not face the law head-on and intuitively understand that they sin, and so necessitate manufacturing artificial ways to skate by it; that without Gods providence, our attempts to make things always go our way ultimately lead back to sin; and that without a Creator to endow His creation with unalienable rights, nobody can accept or protect the sanctity of human life (unborn or born!). While these first three chapters have taken up most of my review, I consider them to be the most important in the book, because the entire volume is built like a pyramid, and thus, the first and most foundational material deserves the most attention. The next two chapters deal with the ways in which we know what we cant not know, or as Budziszewski puts it, the four witnesses, which are as follows: 1) The witness of deep conscience is so ingrained in who we are that it cannot be deceived or killed. 2) The witness of design as such means that the mere fact that the world operates according to a design (which any scientist who is willing to abide by the unadulterated facts can tell you) presupposes a Creator, and this vindicates our deep conscienceconfirms that we have duties not only to neighbor but to God Himself [and] informs us that just as deep conscience is designed, so the rest of us is designed (p. 85). 3) The witness of our own design helps us to see that we are dependant upon other people emotionally, physically, morally, politically, et cetera, and that we complement each other not only as male and female but also by personality, that the way we spontaneously gravitate towards certain kinds of orders evidences Gods design in us, and that the farther away from Gods design we go in our development as society, the harder it becomes to keep it in order. 4) The witness of natural consequences shows us that our actions naturally precipitate consequences and, as Budziszewski so pointedly puts it, Those who refuse the one in whose image they are made live as strangers to themselves (p. 96). Unfortunately, we have so many

people who are living as strangers to themselves. The final chapter of this section is a contrived dialogue between the author and his atheist alter-ego in which many of the issues that have been discussed philosophically are given foils in the form of conversational snippets of an apologetic discussion. While this might seem at first to be a dubious approach consisting only of purposefully crafted straw men, Budziszewskis position as a former atheist who, like Lewis, found the evidence too much to ignore and has become a strong proponent of natural law and Christianity lends him all the credence he needs to make this conversation plausible because it probably occurred in his head at one point. I found it to be very beneficial because in studying ethics and other such topics, I rarely think about the opposition to the material presented until someone challenges me. Having the challenges spelled out in black and white was quite effective. Next, Budziszewski turns to the consequences of denying the conscience its payment for wrongdoing. These take the form of the Five Furies: remorse, confession, atonement, reconciliation, and justification. Budziszewski says that unfortunately, remorse often occurs in the form of repeating the offence [A drunk is ashamed of being a drunk so he gets drunk (p. 141)]. In confession, most humans are willing to admit just about everything about a sin except the fact that it was wrong. For many people, atonement is appeased in every way possible except the one that is right, leading to a needlessly endless cycle of guilt and improper payoff. One of the ways that we have seen the aberrations of our society worsen is in their reconciliation with one another. I think Budziszewski has an excellent point in saying that the perpetrators of terrible sins often commiserate as a reconciliation of sorts, not with society in general, but with others who will affirm and encourage their sin. He states that justification of sin is often the most dangerous of all of the furies, because it alters the definition of right to appease the fury.

Budziszewski uses the sentence It is wrong to deliberately take innocent human life and shows how people attack those last five words from different angles to justify abortion, therefore changing the face and definition of what is right. Chapter 8, entitled Eclipse is in my opinion one of the most insightful chapters because it details some of the ways in which our societys deconstruction of natural law has affected it. The atrophy of tradition has created a people not only traditionless, but also smug and resistant towards true tradition. The cult of the expert has pigeonholed knowledge and fashioned a society full of experts to whom the common man must pay homage and obeisance. The return of the sophist has cast a shadow of doubt on the existence and dependability of a metanarrative: we have lost the Big Story, and the experts and university faculty feed the line in their classes that each person has the right to choose and define his own metanarrative. The infantile regression of public reflection points to the difficulties of engaging in plenary thought in our post-literate society, since it has in some ways eliminated the need for independent thought and only leaves the individual with the decision of which expert opinion to side with. The disabling of shock and shame has desensitized us to seeing and experiencing things that two decades ago would have been thought of as abominations. The prolongation of adolescence points to the facts that as the age of adolescence is beginning to drop worldwide and the age of marriage rises, the increased time culturally demarcated for adolescence has created a culture where responsibility forces maturity, not vice versa. Finally, the cult of feelings has elevated emotion above rational thought in reaction to modernism, forming several cults such as romanticism (the cult of ecstatic feeling), transgressivism (the cult of forbidden feelings), determinism (the cult of irresistible feelings), hedonism (the cult of pleasant feelings), aestheticism (the worship of higher feelings), spiritualism (the adoration of religious feelings), and moralism (the cult of moral

feelings). It is quite plain to grasp how these different approaches to deifying emotion have gripped our culture. The next two chapters concern the public implications of moral wrong and right. Budziszewski discusses how the public, and especially its officials use many strategies to deny the existence of wrong: they allow conscience to cannibalize itself by twisting and misinterpreting it, they seduce the will and emotions that influence the action (or inaction) of conscience, and they create two forms of natural law one for the shock troops of the movement, another for the people outside it (p. 190-1). He also lists the seven methods people use to evade the justice of conscience, each more harmful than the last: sin, self-protection, habituation, self-deception, rationalization, technique, and duty turned upside down. Where the public relations of moral right is concerned, Budziszewski shows the advantages that evil has in rationalization, but also that good has the design of God on its side. He catalogs four pitfalls into which people who attempt to further moral right often fall: exclusivism (just dont do it preaching to the choir), pearl casting (hitting people over the head with Scripture), conversionism (proselytizing), and accommodation (changing peoples momentary behavior, not their mindset). He also discusses countermeasures for avoiding these pitfalls. I think Budziszewski is hitting close to the mark when he says that in dealing with people who deny natural law, we need to draw it out of them and show how their core beliefs (what they cant not know) are inconsistent with how they make their policy and live their lives. The last chapter, entitled Possible Futures suggests the range and depth of evils reach in the coming years, and states that it has never been able to be contained to one level. Budziszewski takes each example he has used throughout the book to its natural, terrifying conclusion, but notes that it is not a prediction of what will happen because of the choices

available to human free will. However, he does not wallow in despair, but points to our true hope, repentance. One of his best closing statements is the following: To honor the inbuilt purposes of our design, we must honor the Designer who inbuilt them. And to honor the Designer, we must weep that we ever thought to take His place (p. 216). I think this entire book was very well written and easy to read; furthermore, I was thankful and impressed that it didnt pull too many punches. Budziszewski speaks the truth forcefully and does a good job of covering most if not all of the major bases. Not every argument is as ironclad as the Formula of Concord, but they do give us readers a good idea of where to start when exploring these issues. I especially appreciated the way Budziszewski numbered most of his points. Whenever an author begins his explanation of several parallel points by letting the reader know how many there are and numbering them, I believe it is much easier to follow and remember. Overall, I hold this book in high esteem and would recommend that every seminarian, pastor, and even layman read it so that they either see more clearly the difficulties of natural law inherent in our society or realize for the first time how Gods design for the world is something that we cant not know.