Storge

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. Tonight, I’d like to start a new topic to discuss. I recently preached a sermon at my church on 1 Corinthians 13. The sermon was quite popular and now I’d like to write out some more about the topic of love. Before doing that, I think we should take a look at what love is and to do so, we should see what each of the four kinds of love are.

First off is storge, which is familiar love. Storge love is the kind of love you have for your fellow man just because he is a man. It is also the kind of love that you have for family. For example, suppose that you did not know the people that are now your parents. I am assuming that you have a good relationship with your parents for this. If not your parents, try to think of any relative you have a good relationship with. If you were not related to this person and you just met this person, do you think you’d really form such a bonding relationship with them?

It is because they are family that you form such a great bond. For some of my younger readers, I wish for you to know that if you have a relationship with your folks that isn’t terrible, but you wish it would be better, that it does improve when you get out of the house. It’s amazing how much you learn that your parents really do. Now as a married man, I have come to realize more and more that my mother knows a whole lot more than I ever realize and our relationship, though it has never been bad, has never been better.

Storge love does not mean that you make the stranger someone you have a deep devotion to, but it means that all things being equal, you treat them as a human being. You hold the door open for someone just because they are a person. It is the kind of love that we ought to show, which is what should ideally take place when driving for example, a place that we can bear to improve on.

Of course, this does not mean that you can never be tough on someone, but they must give a reason for such toughness. If some stranger comes up to me and insults my wife for example, he’s not going to get storge. He may be the stranger still, but he is also someone who has shown himself to be in opposition to the good of the person that I love far far more.

Most of us don’t deal with such, although we do deal with some people who get under our skin. It is our case of judgment to know when we ought to say something and when we ought to ignore. As one in the working industry, I often ignore such things realizing when I go home at the end of the day and spend the time with the Mrs., that what was said will not really matter. Are there some battles not worth fighting? Of course. Some are however, and I suggest the reader consider themselves more on which battles to fight and which to not based on their ability, the situation, and the possible consequences.

Next time, we shall look at Phileo.

Coherency And Truth

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we’re diving into the ocean of truth. Lately we’ve been looking at presuppostionalism and I think tonight I’d like to wrap that series up as there are other topics I am wanting to look at more now. Let’s conclude then by looking at the idea of coherency.

Someone like Bahnsen can go to the atheist and say “Do you have an answer for how it is possible to know anything?” “Do you have a grounding for morality?” “Can you really be sure based on your worldview of anything at all?” If the answer is no then Bahnsen can say that his worldview does in fact explain things.

Indeed, it does have explanatory power, but there is more to having a true worldview than explanatory power. A fun exercise to do with a presuppositional work is to go through and see how many times you can change references to God or Christ to be “Allah” and that the argument still functions the same way.

Hence, the problem. A Christian can use the argument. A Muslim can. A Jew can. Another kind of theism could. The approach using a transcendental argument does not prove just Christian theism. In fact, I think the transcendental argument does have some value, but the problem is that when we start saying that only Christianity can explain the transcendental argument, then we start biting off more than we can chew.

Historical apologetics of some kind are absolutely essential. We have to be able to make the case that Jesus rose from the dead. We cannot make the case that God exists and therefore Jesus rose from the dead. It is more likely that we could go in the reverse. If we can demonstrate that Jesus rose from the dead, then this gets us closer to evidence that God does in fact exist.

The point is that we cannot simply have coherency. Consider a detective who enters upon a crime scene. He has a coherent theory on who did the crime and why they did it, but unfortunately, he has no evidence. When the detective brings the suspect to court, no one will accept it without hard evidence. It could be his theory does explain everything, but having an explanation of everything is not the same as being able to show that that explanation is true.

Now coherency is important in that if a theory is not consistent with itself, then it cannot be true. Coherency is necessary to truth, but it is not sufficient. None of us would be wanting to go sign up at Hogwart’s if we knew that there were no contradictions in the Harry Potter stories.

My conclusion in all of this is that I see a sadly flawed approach and the usages I’ve seen of it thus far have been depressing. I recommend Christians become familiar with the historical and theological arguments. When you read authors of another methodology, be sure to honestly examine them. Just because a side agrees in the conclusion does not mean that they’ve taken the best way to get there.

We start a new topic next time.

Presuppositionalism and Certainty

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’ve been spending much of our time lately looking at presuppositionalism. I’d like to begin wrapping things up now and the first step in doing that will be to look at the question of certainty and how it relates to the epistemological basis for presuppositionalism.

Do you know anything? If so, how do you know that you know what you know? For the presuppositionalist, the answer is that you cannot know anything unless you are able to ground it in the triune God who is the basic presupposition of understanding anything. If you do not have that grounding, then how could you know anything at all?

Most of us however do think that we know things even if we cannot exactly say how we know them. The idea of knowing how one knows first is far more Cartesian than anything else. Descartes wanted to start with a method for establishing knowledge and come to something that could not be doubted and he got the cogito which goes “I think, therefore I am.”

First problem? It’s doubtful. Because there is thinking, that means there is a thinker who exists and that thinker is an I? What could be said is that thinking exists. There were numerous philosophers in Descartes’s day that raised the objections to him.

Second, was this really the way to go? Do you really have to have total and absolute certainty in order to be able to establish something as true? For instance, I believe that I can tell you what I had for breakfast this morning and be totally correct. How could I establish that to you with certainty? I have no idea. However, I can think of no real reason to doubt it.

The counter to Descartes is to think of foundational beliefs instead. It is not that you begin with how you can know something, but you begin with what you know and then you think about how you know it. There are a number of propositions that you can be given and when asked how you know that they are true, you eventually say “I just do!”

From what I see in the presuppositionalist approach, the idea is to go with the doubt of Descartes instead and ask how someone knows something apart from God. The response to give would be “I have no reason to doubt it. Can you give me one?” Now I’m not against asking someone how they know something and I think if you can give reasons for doubt, by all means do some. Doubt can be a very powerful weapon.

However, I am against an epistemological approach that bases itself more on doubt than on truth finding. I have not seen an epistemological method given yet from the presuppositional approach. In all of Bahnsen’s “Van Til’s Apologetic” there is no epistemology mentioned. There is just the assertion that reality needs to be grounded in the triune God. Now I agree that God is the basis for reality and it is all grounded in Him, but we need more than just saying “It is.”

Thus, my first major objection is this idea of absolute certainty. By all means, be as sure as you can in your beliefs, but do not make it a statement of saying that unless you can absolutely positively know something without a shadow of a doubt, you do not know it. The presuppositionalist approach if they want to hold to their arguments needs to have an epistemology in it.

 

Glorious Circles?

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve lately been looking into the topic of presuppositionalism. Tonight, I’d like to look at the idea of circular reasoning. I think that those of us who are classical and evidentialists do rightly charge the presuppositional camp with circular reasoning. The problem I see however is that the presuppositional camp freely admits this.

Don’t believe it? Consider what Greg Bahnsen says in “Van Til’s Apologetic” on page 518. In stating the way that he answers the charge of circular reasoning, Bahnsen says:

Our answer to this is briefly that we prefer to reason in a circle to not reasoning at all.

He later states on the same page that:

Reasoning in a vicious circle is the only alternative to reasoning in a circle as discussed above…

John Frame says on page 305 of “Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of his Thought” that:

Such circularity is unavoidable, and it exists on both sides of the debate.

Indeed, presuppositionalists seem to revel in the circularity. For instance, on the Unbelievable broadcast, through Premier Christian Radio, Sye Tenbruggencate in round 2 of a debate with Paul Baird was told that his reasoning was circular to which he answered, “What’s wrong with that?”

Only everything.

To begin with, circular reasoning does not cease to be circular reasoning just because it’s about God and fallacies do not cease to become fallacies ever just because the subject matter one is thinking about is God. A fallacy is a fallacy is a fallacy. God is not glorified when we misuse our logic in his service.

Second, it does no good to say that the argument is not viciously circular. This is a distinction without a difference. In other places, a presuppositionalist would be very quick to point out when an unbeliever was engaging in circular reasoning, and they should rightfully do so. The problem is that the rules seem to change for them. I have long deplored how atheists can often make Christians have to prove every claim they have but when it comes to some theories like a multiverse, all of a sudden we don’t have to have proof for that. All sides should agree on the ground rules for debate and follow accordingly, and those ground rules are the proper use of reasoning first off.

Now it could be said that we are circular in assuming reason. The reply to this is to say that we do no such thing. Reason is what we have to start with. To assume it would be to take it for granted. However, if I am told that I should question reason at the start and see if it’s a valid starting point, how am I to do that? Do I do see reasonably or unreasonably? If I am told to go to Scripture first, am I to conclude that that is what I should do reasonably or unreasonably?

If we said “Begin with revelation” then we have to ask “Which one?” Should I begin with the Hindu or the Buddhist or the Christian or the Muslim or the Mormon revelation? (I do realize that in pantheistic faiths and some Eastern thought that the idea of revelation is a problem, but for now let us approach each faith as if we were uninformed.) If we believe God’s Word can stand any test, then we should not hesitate to bring any test to it and we should not believe that we have to assume it in order to see its truth.

We conclude then that any system that engages in circular reasoning is faulty and to be avoided. This does get us into epistemological issues and I plan to address those more next time.

But Isn’t Man Depraved?

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’ve lately been looking at the apologetic method known as presuppositionalism. Tonight, I’d like to get somewhat into doctrinal waters and deal with the objection from some that fallen man is incapable of knowing the truth about God.

Now there are extremes here as some have said that it is impossible for fallen man to reach right conclusions. This seems like a stretch however as in the Old Testament, we are told that the wisdom of Solomon was even greater than the pagan kings, implying that those pagan kings were pretty wise. As we have shown, pagans were held accountable for moral laws they ought to have known they were violating.

What about saying that fallen man can be right about other things, but that he can never be right about God? This would also seem to be problematic. For instance, many of us would agree with a number of statements made about God by Greek philosophers. The word “omnipotent” does not show up in the Bible, but we do not hesitate to use it to describe God seeing as we believe He is all-powerful and that has also been because of philosophical thinking in light of Scriptural revelation. Of course, the philosophers made a lot of mistakes, but considering all they had was reason and no Scripture, they did quite well.

We could also ask about fallen angels. Does the devil know that God exists? Does he know that God is triune? Does he know that God is omnipotent and omniscient? If any of these is yes, it would seem to be that we have a problem seeing as if anyone is fallen in all of creation, then it would certainly be the devil.

I am highly aware that presuppositional writers do state that they admit that fallen man can know things, but the question to ask is why is the cut-off line so arbitrary? Why suddenly stop it at God? If a lost person says “I do not know which God is the true God yet, but I know that whichever God created things, he has to be extremely smart and extremely powerful.” While we would say that he did not go far enough in what he said, we would not think that the unbeliever who said this was wrong.

Am I denying that man is fallen? Certainly not. One can be a Calvinist (Not saying I am, and I’m not saying I’m not) and still not be a presuppositionalist. In fact, many critiques of presuppositionalism have come from within the Calvinist camp. It is my contention that the fallenness of man will relate more to the will than to the intellect. Having a pure will would not necessitate being a super genius. The will is that which will effect how the intellect is used and we all know how good we are at reasoning to conclusions we want or don’t want to be true.

We are not forced to say that man’s intellect is so fallen that it cannot grasp the truth, even about God. Now how that fallenness is taken care of, be it in a Calvinistic or Arminian sense, I leave up to the reader to decide. At this point, I just want to say that I do not see the claim about fallen man having much weight.

 

Is Scripture Self-Attesting?

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’ve lately been looking at the topic of presuppositionalism. Last time, we discussed some more about the Scriptures and how we will have to examine them to see which God is the one we should be serving or if any of them even can rightly claim that.

Now I don’t plan on making this a wholesale apologetic on defense of the Scriptures. That can be done and it has been done and I would be glad to recommend resources on the topic. For now, I’d mainly like to deal with the idea that the Scriptures are self-attesting. That is, that the Bible is all we need and the Bible will defend itself.

In a sense, the Bible is self-attesting. It makes the claim itself to be the Word of God. Does that mean that it is the Word of God? No. However, at the same time, it doesn’t rule it out. We should consider that if someone describes themselves to us in a certain way, we can consider that as evidence of their nature. If someone claimed to be a perfect pipeline to God, for instance, we could consider that that is the case, or we could consider it as evidence that this person is quite arrogant.

I am also not wanting to deny that there is a great beauty in the Bible that we ought to recognize. For instance, as someone who has done research on the cults, when finishing reading the Book of Mormon, I found I had a greater appreciation for the Bible as the Book of Mormon is a book written to have the appearance of Scripture and frankly, it doesn’t pull it off well. The Bible’s own writing is quite different.

However, I do not accept the claim that the Bible is the Word of God because it says it is the Word of God. After all, the Koran makes some high claims about itself. Why should I believe one Scripture over another if both are making identical claims about themselves? The answer is that we need to actually look outside the Scripture.

This is what the early church had to do and what people had to do before there was any Scripture. For the early church, all they had was the Old Testament as we see it today. They didn’t have the letters of Paul or the gospels for a couple of decades. They saw the Bible as the Word of God based on the authority of Christ and they were convinced that he had risen from the dead by the testimony of the eyewitnesses and the working of miracles.

I also do not believe we can simply see what Scripture has to say about itself and then go from there. It’s part of the evidence, but it’s not all of the evidence. In our day and age, we simply must give a defense of the Scriptures and their authenticity, which is also what the early church did. Now does the Wisdom of God confound the world? Yes. What does that mean? It simply means that the way that God chose to do things was not the modus operandi the world would use. For them, to say a crucified man was meant to be the king of the world and save mankind was nonsense, but it was the way God worked.

Now does that mean that we can never trust the power of Scripture? No. If someone wants to become a Christian by hearing Scripture alone, then great. If not and we need to defend the Scriptures and show their authenticity, then we are prepared to do that also.

We shall continue next time.

 

Determining The God

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. Last time, I wrote in our series on presuppositionalism of how I do believe that God is necessary to explain reality, but the knowledge of God is not necessary for someone to claim knowledge of reality. The question then becomes which God will it be. Will it be the “generic” god of natural theology?

We are often told that only the true God can explain reality. That is correct. Only a God who exists can bring about reality. Using reason alone, what is the God that exists?

The first quality is that this God must exist. By this standard, faiths like Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all claim that their God exists. What else do they have to say about their God? Well God is omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent in each one. In fact, using just natural theology, there really isn’t a way to tell the concepts apart.

Note this. A Muslim, Christian, and Jew can each use the same theistic proofs in order to make their case. Maimonides and Avicenna both would have been fine with using the five ways of Thomas Aquinas for instance. A Muslim or a Jew today could use the Kalam Cosmological argument that William Lane Craig uses.

At this point then, the philosopher simply lists some attributes of God using reason alone and all three faiths can claim that their religion fits with that. Of course, there are other systems that could fit just as well. A deistic concept could explain the existence of the universe and objective morality. So how is it then that we can determine which concept is the true one?

If all we have is philosophy, we cannot. All our philosophy can do is tell us which concept is not true. It is not capable of showing which one is true. While we would affirm that the triune God is the one that explains reality, the question is if we can simply use reason and get to the truth of the gospel from that.

In no way. Philosophy cannot prove Christianity. Many a Christian can study philosophy thinking that he will prove Christianity. He cannot. Does that mean it is useless? Far from it! Philosophy can support Christianity and prove false arguments that are used against Christianity as well as increasing our understanding of Christian doctrines. It is quite important to a Christian.

However, to say that reason could deduce the gospel is really to lower the gospel. It is to say that we do not need God to reveal the gospel or His nature for us to understand them. We can figure them out on our own. The traditional views of apologetics have it that we need God to reveal Himself to know these things. One cannot reason to the God of Christianity, although they can reason to a God who has many attributes of the God of Christianity.

Consistency is necessary for truth, but it is not sufficient to prove something is true. A detective needs more than a consistent theory to prove that X did the crime. He needs evidence. So how are we going to get the evidence of which worldview is true? Will we have to examine the writings themselves and see what they say?

Interesting thought that.

And that is something to discuss another time.

Knoweldge of God?

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’ve been writing on presuppositionalism lately and the knowledge of God. I’ve already made several points about moral knowledge. What about knowledge of God Himself? Is it possible for the pagan to have knowledge of God without having a salvific knowledge of God?

In a way, it seems that the presuppositionalist is in a bind. We are told on the one hand that man can have no knowledge without being able to support it in the triune God. On the other hand, we are told that all men know who God is and need to repent of their rebellion against him. Which is it that is the case? Does man know God or not?

Romans 1:18-21 is often the key text cited. However, it is a difficult one that many exegetes have wrestled with. When man is said to know God, what exactly is meant? It can’t be salvific knowledge of God here or else that would mean that those who were saved apostasized. An arminian would not have a problem with that, but one who is a Calvinist, as presuppositionalists are, would. This does not mean Calvinism or eternal security or the perseverance of the saints is false. It simply means that believing in presuppositionalism entails believing in Calvinism and believing in Calvinism means one cannot accept this interpretation.

Then if it isn’t salvific knowledge, what is it? Does it mean that everyone knows that God is triune and that He has revealed Himself in Christ? Doubtful. We would need some evidence that there were any among the pagans or even among the Jews themselves prior to Christ who were affirming the doctrine of the Trinity. Not something like the Trinity such as the Jews having the idea of multiple hypostases and plurality possibly being in God or pagans supposed having a Trinity when they have a triad instead. It would need to be the bona fide Trinity.

What does it mean then? It refers to man has a knowledge of God that is basic and can grasp His basic attributes even if imperfectly. That this knowledge is not necessarily salvific is a far cry from saying that it is false. One can read much of Aristotle’s work in the Metaphysics on God and see much that is true from a Christian perspective. Some of it is false, but not all. How did Aristotle get there? He reasoned from the things that were seen.

Are we to say Aristotle had lucky guesses or did He have knowledge of God? I believe the latter. How is that possible however? How could you have knowledge of God without knowledge that God is triune? It is because that knoweldge of God is knowledge of being. We can know something about existent things without knowing how we know them.

Again, this is not denying that the existence of God I think is necessary for there to be an explanation for such things, but it is saying that one does not need to have knowledge of the existence of God in order to say one knows these things. At this point, the question can be asked “Well which God does provide that basis if not the triune God?” Let us look at that tomorrow night.

Prayer Pansies

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’m going to be taking a break from our series to look at a situation that has happened recently concerning prayer at a high school graduation. Many of us when we graduated had a prayer said and the older you are, I would think it’s more likely that that took place.

However, the Medina Valley School District in Texas has ordered that public prayer be prohibited at a high school graduation ceremony. (Link at bottom) Note that in the link when clicked, the judge says that if there is a prayer said, the family and their son will suffer irreparable harm.

What?!

So if someone dares mention the name of Jesus publicly (Except of course if they’re using the name of the person that Christians hold in the highest esteem as the perfection of all that is good and holy) then this family will suffer great harm? Exactly what kind of harm are we talking about? Are we talking about being on a psychiatrist’s couch for years saying “It was awful. They actually said ‘Jesus’ around me and prayed.”

When some of us were growing up, we actually learned how to deal with that which did not go our way and did not try to shape the rest of the world to fit our particular tastes. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to change the world, but this is simply forcing everyone else in the area to bow to the sensitivities of one family without cause.

This is along the lines of people who are told at their workplace to not say “Merry Christmas” but “Happy Holidays” lest someone get offended. If a Jew comes up to me and wishes me a happy Passover or a Muslim wishes me a happy Ramadan, I’m not going to be offended. I would in fact be happy to discuss their religious beliefs with them.

Strangely enough, this offense is never a big deal when it goes the other way. Jesus can be openly mocked and maligned anywhere, after all, that only offends Christians. If someone wants to mock Jesus, that’s their right. I also have a right to respond to them, but the way to do it is not through bullying in the courts but in debating our worldviews.

There is also much mockery for Christian practice in the world. I know someone who is a devout Christian who recently got a job at a Wal-Mart where he works with several guys his age. He is a college student and he is often mocked because as a single man, he is a virgin and plans to stay that way until marriage, a common Christian practice.

Is what’s being done to him wrong? You bet it is. Offensive? No doubt. Painful? Sure. What’s the proper way to handle it? The way he’s doing it. He’s looking for reasons why he does think pre-marital sex is wrong and until then, just not giving in. If some people want to be jerks, let them be jerks. For now, he’s dealing with something obviously wrong and he’s not whining to the court system. He’s growing up and taking it for the time being believing standing strong in his virtue will win out.

Instead, our culture has become so weak that we’re crying out that the worst thing you can do to someone is offend them. There is no place for needless offenses of course, but there are some offenses that ought to just be overlooked instead of thinking that one has to be a victim entirely to one’s circumstances.

This family however thinks it’s more beneficial to treat their son like a child who must have everything go his way and make everyone else go without a simple prayer just because of the cause of offense. The early Christians were thrown to the lions and set on fire and in response, they wrote to the emperor and stated their case. They simply wanted toleration.

For the people who often speak the most about tolerance, you’d think they’d be willing to tolerate some. Apparently not. Tolerance is a great virtue, provided everyone else practice it.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/06/02/prayer-prohibited-at-graduation-ceremony/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moral and Levitical Laws

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve been looking at Presuppositionalism lately and pointing out how it is possible to have knowledge of truth without having direct awareness of the God of the Bible. Of course, I do not deny that that God exists, but I do deny that one has to have epistemological knowledge of Him to have knowledge, a.k.a. justified true beliefs. An atheist reader who I respect responded to what I said yesterday and was asking about laws like what we find in Leviticus.  The Ten Commandments are for us some, but how do we know what is and isn’t?

Good question.

Right off, I’m pleased that the question is being asked rather than the usual canard that’s thrown out of “Well the Bible says homosexual activity is an abomination, but it also says the same thing about eating shellfish.”

To begin with, both of the injunctions against homosexuality in Leviticus are to be found in chapters 18 and 20. I’m not going to go through the whole list, but I want to call attention to how each of those chapters ends.

First, Leviticus 18:24-28.

24 “‘Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. 25 Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. 26 But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the foreigners residing among you must not do any of these detestable things, 27 for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. 28 And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.

And now, we move on to Leviticus 20:22-24.

22 “‘Keep all my decrees and laws and follow them, so that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. 23You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them. 24 But I said to you, “You will possess their land; I will give it to you as an inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey.” I am the LORD your God, who has set you apart from the nations.

Notice something in each of these passages? In each one, God tells the people that the inhabitants of the land are being cast out because of committing these acts. In the Bible, you do not see God punishing other nations for failing to keep the ceremonial Law of Israel. Note also the distinctions that are made for Israel such as dietary are later shown to be no longer in effect in the New Testament, such as in Mark 7. Does that mean these were wasteful and pointless laws? Not at all. They were established to keep in the mind of the Israelites purity.

What about abominations?

The word can refer to an abomination in two ways. One is in a ritual sense and one is in an ethical sense. Consider how it would be wrong to throw dirt onto your neighbor’s carpet. It would also be wrong to murder his wife there and spill her blood on the carpet, but when we say both of those are wrong, we do not mean they are wrong in the same sense.

How is it known which is which? The context is the key. Moral laws are generally upheld throughout the Bible as a whole. Ceremonial and civil are not. For instance, with ceremonial laws, God Himself states that He does not desire sacrifice but rather pure hearts. Why have sacrifices then? To point to Christ and to show that there is a price for sin. See also judgments on other nations.

The Law of Israel was given for Israel and Gentiles were never to be under it. The Natural Law of morality however is for everyone and everyone is accountable to it. Of course, those with Scripture are more accountable as they should definitely know better with explicit commands from God, but sadly, we often do not.

I hope this clears up any difficulties.