Necessity is the word of tyrants.

Expediency is foundational to our current administrative state, wherein one body writes the laws, executes the laws, alters the laws case-by-case, and judges the laws, with minimal interference by representative government or the judiciary. Expedience, necessity, is an effective argument, though not a good one. One great danger of ‘natural reason’ approaches to politics is this very appeal to expediency.

The appeal of expediency is simple: this way works, faster. Principles are nothing, it cries, if they have no effect. Less subtly: why not do wrong that good may come? Is it even wrong at all, if good will come of it? Why shouldn’t the government run the schools? It will make sure that all the children learn in them….

The natural reason approach is weak to expediency arguments, though holding to it does not mean the thinker has succumbed already. See, natural reason political theology posits that men can, through their usual (God-given) faculties, figure out the proper goal and means of civil government. That’s not the case (and Christians espousing it usually sneak a lot of Biblical commandments in through the back door), but it is the pretension.

Settings aside for a moment the difficulty of deciding on the specifics of our goals (and the generalities), let’s consider how we reach those goals. In particular, let’s assume our goal is an ‘intelligent, well-educated, thoughtful populace.’ What means do we have available to reach that end?

Government power offers an easy, expedient solution. Compulsory or coercively-encouraged attendance, combined with a governmentally prescribed curriculum, promises to produce the results we want, at least on average. Very well and good. Natural reason had a problem, and it provided a solution.

It provided an immoral solution. The Biblical testimony on this point is clear: parents, not the civil government, are to raise their children. Although some deviation from this is unavoided in a fallen world (parents do sometimes die early, and orphans aren’t always adopted), the government certainly oughtn’t to establish a societal pattern contrary to this teaching. Natural reason, however, can only come to that conclusion through a torturous route, for it is not allowed to look at Scripture (that would make it, shudder-shudder, general-equity theonomy). Natural reason might recognize the parental privilege, of course, but it has no particular reason to.

The siren song of expediency, moreover, will ever sing in the ears of natural reason political theology. The very idea of that theology is to devise through logic the best goal and the best method of reaching that goal. While of course the best goal and the best method are the righteousness of God and the righteous path respectively, humans are very bad at seeing that fact, even when it is in reach of our intellects (as in some cases it may not be, particularly if working off a limited data set). That we all know His righteousness and all know it is the best way, this does not help (Rom. 1:18-25), as that knowledge merely practices us in twisting and misunderstanding and ignoring the full truth. And ever expediency urges us on: ‘This would work better….’

(It seems to me that some of Stephen Wolfe’s interest in a ‘Christian prince’ may be connected to this flaw in natural reason.)

Alternately, we could turn to the one source of truth which has been given to us as infallible, sufficient, and sufficiently clear: Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16-17). On that firm basis, we can analyze the offerings of ‘expediency’ to see where, by crossing Biblical principles and Biblical prescriptions of both goal and means, the expediency becomes counter-productive to that civil righteousness which ought to be our goal in government.

God bless.