In his Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas addresses the question, should Jewish children be baptized against the will of their parents? The question may seem absurd to Protestants, who don’t consider baptism to be absolutely necessary or efficacious for salvation. But the question makes good sense on Roman Catholic terms. After all, if the sacrament truly makes the difference between heaven and hell (or at least heaven and limbo), wouldn’t it be of utmost importance to baptize these babies, even without parental consent?
Nevertheless, Aquinas answers the question in the negative, considering such an action to be a violation of natural justice. He writes: "…A child, before it has the use of reason, is ordained to God, by a natural order, through the reason of its parents, under whose care it naturally lies, and it is according to their ordering that things pertaining to God are to be done in respect of the child."1
This point illustrates one of the central principles of Thomistic thought, which is laid out succinctly in the first question of the Summa: grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.2 Although this principle is well known among Roman Catholics today, it is less familiar to Protestants. Some Protestants even outright reject it as promoting a specious kind of “dualism.”
And yet it wasn’t always this way. There were many disagreements between the Reformers and Rome, but the Thomistic nature/grace principle wasn’t one of them. In fact, the early Protestants explicitly and repeatedly affirmed it. In the late 16th century, Franciscus Junius, a leading student of John Calvin and Theodore Beza, wrote, “Grace perfects nature; grace does not, however, abolish it.”3 In the following century, the Reformed scholastic Francis Turretin likewise wrote, “Grace does not destroy, but perfects nature.”4 And in the late 19th century, the Dutch neo-Calvinist Herman Bavinck also wrote, “Grace repairs and perfects nature.”5
Bavinck’s expression is probably the most apt: the grace of redemption is actually twofold, both repairing and perfecting nature. It repairs nature by restoring those principles of the created order that God had ordained before Adam’s fall. But such restoration is not a mere repristination, as if Christ came simply to rewind the clock back to Eden. Grace also perfects nature by securing for us that which Adam would have gained had he not sinned. Christians, unlike Adam, now have the grace of perseverance (or “indefectibility”), which gives us assurance of our eternal, heavenly inheritance.
But this inheritance is not our possession yet. To act as if it already were would be to “immanentize the eschaton,” as some have put it. The nature/grace principle thus helps us to maintain the distinction between the present age and the age to come, thereby avoiding a number of misunderstandings. For example, if Christ says that in the resurrection there will be no marriage (Matt. 22:30), then why don’t we all start taking vows of celibacy now? Or if heaven is a place where all swords will be beaten into plowshares (Isa. 2:4; Joel 3:10), then why don’t we abolish the police and military now? The answer is that the principles of the glorified order do not (yet) replace those of the created order. We first bear the image of the natural “man of dust” before we can bear the image of the spiritual “man of heaven” (1 Cor. 15:44–49).
So what does all this have to do with masculinity? Precisely this: the gospel does not replace God’s original created design for men, but restores it. In fact, the gospel presupposes this design.
Consider Paul’s exhortation in 1 Corinthians 16:13: “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.” Vigilance, endurance, courage—all naturally masculine virtues. Not because women cannot possess them (they can), but because they are the virtues uniquely necessary for men to fulfill the callings to which they are naturally oriented. Paul does not need to explain to his audience why these virtues are masculine; nature itself teaches them.
Likewise, Paul can tell us that effeminacy (malakia) is a sin (1 Cor. 6:9), but nature tells us what that sin consists of. Aside from the more obvious sin of homosexuality, cultures around the world recognize effeminate men by their “blandishments of speech, by lightness of gesture and apparel, and other allurements.”6
Unfortunately, contemporary evangelical discussion on masculinity is often reduced to an atomistic process of biblical proof-texting, without regard for deeper metaphysical and redemptive-historical foundations. As a result, three problems emerge. First, our definition of masculinity becomes truncated to roles in marriage and the church—a primary concern of Scripture, to be sure, but hardly comprehending the fullness of God’s design for men. Second, even these truncated roles come to appear as arbitrary impositions—rules without reasons—that run embarrassingly counter to the egalitarian spirit of the age. And third, we are ill-equipped to deal with sloppy biblical counterarguments that are likewise divorced from a deeper theological framework—for example, does Paul’s claim to boast in his weakness (2 Cor. 11:30) mean that men should stop working out?
We can do better. The light of nature enables us to retrieve a deeper and broader view of godly masculinity—one that rationally grounds the biblical testimony on manhood, and which affirms men’s creational calling to produce, to pursue, to protect, to provide, and to preside.
1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III.68.10.
2 Ibid, I.1.8 ad 2.
3 Franciscus Junius, The Mosaic Polity, 38.
4 Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I:31.
5 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:226.
6 John Calvin, Commentary on 1 Corinthians 6:9.
Kyle Dillon serves as Assistant Pastor of Theological Instruction at Riveroaks Reformed Presbyterian Church in Germantown, TN.
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