Unlike Karl Barth, who argued there was no common point of contact between the Christian and the non-Christian, early Reformed theologians insisted that believers and unbelievers both shared common notions about right and wrong.[16] Moreover, the classical position for both Protestants and Catholics alike, maintained that an appeal could be made to the “book of nature” when defending the faith. The pre-and-post Reformation consensus was that general revelation and special revelation were not incompatible, but complementary.

In our last post, we made four observations regarding how Lewis goes about establishing the law of human nature in the first section of Mere Christianity. We should return to these observations and make some additional comments on how they might be applied to apologetics. However, it first must be noted how these apologetic appeals are justified within the framework of Reformed theology and its understanding of the covenant of works.

Reformed theology views God’s relationship with man in terms of covenants. In Scripture covenants are “solemn agreements, negotiated or unilaterally imposed, that bind the parties to each other in permanent defined relationships, with specific promises, claims, and obligations on both sides.”[1] The Westminster Confession of Faith declares the distance between God and man is so great that he took the initiative to voluntarily condescend to him through the expression of covenant (WCF 7.1). The WCF affirms two major covenants in Scripture—a covenant of works and a covenant of grace. The covenant of works is the first covenant made with man, “wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience” (7.2). Due to the fall, Adam and his posterity became incapable of life through the first covenant, whereby God made another called the covenant of grace, in which he freely offers life and salvation to sinners by Jesus Christ; “requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained onto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe” (7.3).[2]

The WCF also uses the terms “covenant of nature” and “covenant of life” in reference to the covenant made with Adam. The covenant of works assumes that when God created man, the relationship he had with Adam was a natural one. Adam was naturally under the law and was duty-bound to obey.[3] There was no dualism between Adam’s spiritual life and his work-a-day world. Adam was made a holistic being, and his life as a creature of the covenant was a unified whole.[4] But we should say more. Creation itself must not be thought of as a natural order whereupon a supernatural order was imposed on it; rather, the entire cosmos is dependent on God and operates on a charter given to it.[5] “For humanity, all of life is fundamentally religious because all is lived before the face of God, either obediently in his service or disobediently in the service of an idol.”[6] The classical Reformed teaching regarding the covenant of works sees Adam naturally endowed as originally created in the image of God. He lived in a state that was changeably good, not a state that was unchangeably good as when a person is justified by faith. When sin entered, the created order was spoiled and Adam was ruined. Nevertheless, vestiges of the imago Dei endured in Adam’s post-fall posterity.[7]

In the first movement of the epistle to the Romans, Paul establishes that both Gentile and Jew are under God’s wrath because of their knowledge of his divine law. All humanity stand judged by the law because God has revealed himself through creation (1:18-31) and conscience (1:32-2:29). Lewis makes reference to both of these dual components of general revelation in Mere Christianity, but with a special emphasis on conscience. Paul argues that despite the Jews being stewards of the law, they consistently violate the law. He then contends that while the Gentiles are not curators of the divine law, they nevertheless violate their consciences in word and deed. The conscience is the entity Paul says “bears witness” to the law because it possesses a sense of “right and wrong.”[8]

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