The Problem with Natural Law

Natural Law

Christians know what the will of God is.  They know what is morally right and wrong.  They know this because God has revealed this to His covenant people in His word, the Scriptures, and ultimately in His Word, Jesus Christ.  But what about those who do not know God in this way?  Is there still a set of moral standards we can expect them to adhere to, even apart from repentance, faith, and membership in the Church?  One popular Christian answer to this question has been to posit the existence of a Natural Law.^[1]This should not be confused with the scientific “laws of nature,” which provide a descriptive account of the natural world.  In contrast, Natural Law in this context refers to a prescriptive … Continue reading

According to the idea of Natural Law, there is a set of moral principles or rules that are universally accessible to all human beings across every time, place, and culture.  These moral laws are implanted in all human beings and can be accessed by all human beings through human reasoning alone, without any help from special divine revelation.  Thus, although the human will has been corrupted through the Fall, all human beings can at least know what the will of God is according to the Natural Law.  They can know what they ought to do, even if they do not have the will to carry it out.  

Thus, according to the idea of Natural Law, there are two distinct standards of human moral behavior.  There are the moral standards of the Natural Law, which all human beings know (or at least ought to know), and then there are the higher standards of Christian ethics, known through divine revelation, which only Christians can be expected to follow.  On this account, while Christians cannot reasonably judge people outside the church according to the standards of Christian ethics (I Cor 5:12), Christians can (and should) judge people outside the church according to the standards of the Natural Law.  The idea of Natural Law thus provides Christians a foundation for social and political engagement with their surrounding culture, since Christians can reasonably expect anyone in any time, place, or culture, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof, to agree with the ethical standards of the Natural Law.  This allows Christians to set aside their Christian ethical beliefs while engaging in ethical discussion in the public sphere, instead making ethical arguments on a purely Natural Law basis, and to be justified in imposing the standards of Natural Law ethics on people outside the Church, by governmental force if necessary.  

Problems with Natural Law

Despite the popularity of the idea of Natural Law, there are a number of problems with this approach to ethical engagement with people outside the Church.  The idea that there is a fixed set of self-evident moral principles is highly questionable, given the great diversity of ethical beliefs various societies have had, not to mention the even greater variety of ethical beliefs among individuals.  Christians who advocate the idea of Natural Law may claim that they can set aside their particular Christian theological beliefs as they articulate a supposedly universally accessible set of moral principles contained in the Natural Law, but it is highly questionable whether a Christian is ever able to truly accomplish this; hidden or implicit Christian assumptions always intrude into this project.  Even if Christians are able to articulate a totally de-Christianized set of Natural Law moral principles, often these principles will not be accepted by the non-Christian culture in which they live; thus, nothing has been gained by Christians avoiding reference to Christian beliefs while creating their moral arguments.  In fact, the Christian position on a moral issue may appear weaker and less reasonable when Christians provide tenuous Natural Law arguments for it, while avoiding the more robust Christian theological arguments for it which are the real reason that they hold to this moral position.

Even leaving aside these practical difficulties, there are deeper theological problems with the idea of Natural Law.  The first theological problem is that it does not take sufficient account of the consequences of the Fall.  When humanity became separated from God, this affected all of human nature, not just the human will.  Apart from God taking the initiative and revealing Himself to human beings in history, human beings do not know God, and they cannot know His will.  All human societies have ethical standards, and there is to some extent significant ethical agreement across many societies, but this is because all human beings share the same (Fallen but fundamentally good) nature, and so often develop similar ideas.  It is not because there is a single, universally accessible set of moral principles.

The second, even more fundamental theological problem is that it is difficult to square the idea of Natural Law with the story of the Christian gospel.  The moral message of the Christian gospel is this: Jesus Christ is Lord of all, and He will soon judge the whole world, so repent of your sins and submit to His Lordship by joining up with His movement, the Church (Acts, 17:30-31).  If this is the case, then on what basis can Christians articulate a distinct, non-Christian set of moral laws that set aside the truth of the gospel message?  How can we meaningfully articulate a moral law that makes no reference to the basic, fundamental foundation of true morality?  To argue that there is a fixed created order independent of the gospel story that provides a foundation for the Natural Law implies that the salvation brought by the Christian gospel is some kind of extraneous intervention into creation, which is quite dubious from a biblical perspective.  Biblically speaking, God’s relationship with His creation through His covenant people, and ultimately through Jesus, is absolutely central to His relationship with His creation as a whole, and it is through this relationship that God is bringing the whole of His creation to be what He always intended it to be.  Even in the story of Scripture, we see that what is ethical has changed over time, depending on what God is doing at different points in salvation history, so the idea that there is a fixed set of universally accessible moral principles for every time, place, and culture is very problematic indeed.

The Bible and Natural Law

There are some passages of Scripture which might be used to object to the position I have articulated so far.  First, there are the oracles against the nations in the Old Testament prophets, in which the prophets denounce the wickedness of other nations and declare that God’s judgment will come upon them.  Does this not show that there must be some universal moral law that all nations should be expected to follow, in addition to the particular law which God has given His covenant people?  The problem with the argument is that virtually all Old Testament scholars agree that the prophets never delivered these oracles to the nations they were criticizing.  Rather, the audience of these oracles against the nations was Israel.  The purpose of the oracles against the nations, then, was not to tell other nations, “You should know better”; it was to tell Israel, “Even though these other enemy nations have harmed or threatened you, I will protect you and save you from them.”  But even if the oracles against the nations do hold enemy nations to certain moral standards, this would not prove that there is a universal Natural Law; it would just show that God is holding these nations accountable to particular moral truths that they themselves recognize as being true.

Another passage of Scripture that many have argued supports the idea of Natural Law is Romans 2:14-15: “For when the Gentiles, who do not have the Law, by nature do the things of the Law, though they do not have the Law, they are a law to themselves.  They show the work of the law is written on their hearts, their consciences bearing witness together as their thoughts accuse or even excuse one another.”  Does this show that Paul believed in a universally accessible Natural Law?  No, it does not.  In this passage, Paul does not say that Gentiles have access to a fixed, universal moral law; he says that Gentiles “are a law to themselves.”  The “law” that is written on Gentile hearts, then, is not God’s universal moral Law; it is simply the “law” by which Gentiles live as they act according to their consciences.  Different people’s consciences tell them very different things, depending on their time, place, and culture; there is no uniform conscience across all of humanity.  Paul’s point is that, even though Gentiles do not have access to God’s Law, they believe that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and thus have their own “law” which is in some ways analogous to God’s Law.  That is all.  

Thus, we see that the idea of Natural Law is problematic theologically, and that there is no good support for this idea in Scripture.  But if we cannot appeal to a Natural Law when engaging ethically with people outside the church, what is the alternative?  How can Christians engage socially and politically with their surrounding culture?  I will address this question in my next theology post.