Last night I listened to Maggie Gallagher at the Pennsylvania Family Institute Banquet talk about the ongoing struggle to defend the biblical and traditional definition of marriage. She was not the typical banquet speaker, but this was all the more pleasing. She was making the case for the fact that we need to ply natural law arguments to the sensible, but theologically muddled middle (those for whom common sense rather than biblical warrant drives their outlook on marriage issues. Not your typical banquet talk! This combined with my recently listen to Clarke Forsythe’s brilliant interview on Mars Hill Audio have pushed me to think about how we typically point our arguments at those who are least likely to accept them or those who have already accepted rather than doing the difficult work of giving a reasonable argument to those who are convincible, but not convinced. Forsythe’s concern is that the Pro-Life movement too often makes these sort of arguments and so even though well over 75 percent of the nation things that abortion is the taking of a human life, Pro-life forces cannot mobilize the political support necessary to change the law.Forsythe’s unpack of Thomas Aquinas’ conception of prudence is worth a year of Mars Hill Audio (what a bargain!). I am convinced that Aquinas’ prudence, which he defines as, “wisdom with respect to action”—or basically knowing what to do and say in a given situation. This is what we so long for as we give children a classical Christian education. This is what we so need as a nation—men and women of prudence. Men and women who can make arguments that are true to Christ, win the middle ground and pull down the strongholds of the enemy.
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