Against Natural Law
Can humanity discern morality apart from God? The idea of natural law suggests that just as physical laws govern nature, moral truths are embedded in creation and accessible to all. But is this enough? This article explores the limits of natural law, the necessity of God’s Word to illuminate true morality, and what this means for engaging our culture.
God is a king who rules his world with laws. This is one of the most important truths for Christians to understand as we think about the culture around us and our approach to political engagement. God has created physical laws that govern the universe (we usually think of these as scientific laws) and moral laws that govern the ethical world of human society.
Our culture is very familiar with the scientific laws of nature. Our understanding of the world we live in has been thoroughly shaped by the Enlightenment vision that sees nature almost like a machine, grinding along according to unbending laws of nature. We know these laws can be observed, understood, and described by using the scientific method.
What is less obvious in our collective consciousness is that there is just as much a moral aspect to the natural law as there is a scientific one. It is not just atoms that exist under a law, but also the moral agency of human beings. The law that sexual immorality leads to death is just as unbending as the law of gravity. It is in the very nature of the world God has made.
Though God’s wisdom in nature is displayed obviously, without Christ, society suppresses this knowledge and “their foolish hearts were darkened.” Without repentance, a society will never recognize the natural law that is in fact woven into the nature of things.
The idea of Natural Law in politics and society claims that since the moral law is as observable and knowable as scientific natural laws, you don’t need to be a Christian to know and understand them. In the same way that a non-Christian can use the scientific method to study matter, the non-Christian can study human nature and society and come to know how it works. And if that is the case, then Natural Law gives us an important neutral ground with non-Christians to make societal laws we can both agree upon.
A related topic to this question is the theological categories of general and special revelation. General revelation is God’s revealing of his being and character to all people through nature, whereas special revelation is God’s revealing of who he is in the Bible. The Apostle Paul describes general revelation in the beginning of Romans:
“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” (Romans 1:19-23)
Paul is saying that God’s character is revealed in nature clearly to all people. So, it seems reasonable to conclude from this that a non-Christian should be able to observe the world and learn about the moral law that God has instilled into his creation. Others have used the categories of common grace and special grace to talk about this same principle—common grace is God’s grace to all people, whether they are Christians or not. Jesus describes common grace in the Sermon on the Mount when he says,
“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matt. 5:44-45)
You see how our Father is kind and generous even to people who are living in rebellion against him. That’s why some might say that when a Buddhist man loves his wife and provides for her, this is evidence of God’s common grace in his life.
Many people think they were just born with an instinct: “I should love my neighbor.” But in reality, they were raised in a family and society that has been trained in this truth by Christians for 2000 years.
So the question is: do general revelation and common grace give us enough reason to ground the laws and moral vision of a society in natural law?
Well, to say that Romans 1 makes a case for natural law as a foundation for society misses the main point Paul is making, namely, that though God’s wisdom in nature is displayed obviously, without Christ, society suppresses this knowledge and “their foolish hearts were darkened.” Without repentance, a society will never recognize the natural law that is in fact woven into the nature of things. Without worshiping the Lawgiver and sitting under his word, we will never come to understand the truth of his law. There is only one light that can enable our darkened hearts to see—the light of Christ revealed in the Scriptures.
But someone might object that they know non-Christians who are very moral people and who often believe in moral truths that are consistent with Christianity. Is that not evidence of a natural law that is accessible to everyone?
One thing that is often under-appreciated is how many moral instincts of modern western people (or even global people) actually come from Christianity. Tom Holland has probably written the most well-known treatment of this in his history of Christianity called Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. Many people think they were just born with an instinct: “I should love my neighbor.” But in reality, they were raised in a family and society that has been trained in this truth by Christians for 2000 years. This instinct was not a neutral recognition of natural law. It was the fruit of the gospel working even in the life of an unbeliever.
I heard Peter Leithart say once in a lecture (I don’t know which) that we should develop a new category that is neither common grace nor special grace. He said a third category could be called middle grace. That is, grace that is enjoyed by non-Christians because of a Christian influence on society. For example, if you are a non-Christian born into a just and free society that was built by Christians, this is not common grace, because it is grace that is directly the fruit of the gospel.
It seems to me that much of what we consider to be common grace, or the result of general revelation, is actually much more the fruit of middle grace.
I would go so far as to say that I think this middle grace is not only true of the moral law, but the scientific laws of nature as well. Most people think, “You don’t need to be a Christian to see, study, and understand the laws of nature.” But historically, that is not true. There were many large wealthy and innovative civilizations that never discovered scientific truths. Why was it in Christian lands that the great scientific discoveries were made?
It was Christians who believed that the world was made and governed by a rational God who could be known. This was an incredibly novel view of the world.
The reason is theological. (The historian Rodney Stark explains this in his great book The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success.) The Greeks and the Chinese saw matter as chaotic and unpredictable. Even though they had great innovations in engineering, they never saw into the nature of things. Islam, too, had a less covenantal view of God, and viewed Allah as incredibly unpredictable. He at any moment could execute some random act of his will to unmake his creation. This kept Muslims in the golden age of Islam, despite its many cultural developments, from discovering science.
The God of the Bible is very different. Christians believe (amazingly!) that God makes laws that structure his own governance of his people and his world. God is not capricious. He is stable and unchanging. He enters into covenant with both his creation (Genesis) and his chosen people. He says what he is going to do, and does what he says. He is faithful and consistent.
Even more than that, this covenantal God who binds himself to his own word and directs everything in history according to his unchanging word is knowable. He comes down to reveal his mind to us.
It was Christians who believed that the world was made and governed by a rational God who could be known. This was an incredibly novel view of the world. Specifically in the wake of the Calvinist Revolution that emphasized God’s providential ordering of everything in his creation, both in heaven and on earth, our eyes were opened to explore the orderly ways of his providence in the laws of nature. Hence, it was only in Christian lands that science was developed.
Even our ability to know the laws of nature in science have come because of special revelation, not general revelation alone.
The same is true with the moral law. Even though the Greeks and Romans had political systems (democracy and a republic) that have influenced Christian societies in both the medieval and modern eras, it should not be forgotten that the law of God far predates the Greeks and Romans by a thousand years. (Deuteronomy was written by Moses in 1400 BC.) Who knows what influence the Mosaic law had in shaping the surrounding nations in the years that followed? In fact, that had always been the Lord’s intent. In the early chapters of Deuteronomy it says,
“See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the people, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?” (Deut. 4:5-8)
But more importantly, we would never consider the Greeks and Romans to have had a vision of righteousness anywhere near the moral vision introduced by Christians in the age of the church.
In that sense, natural law does give us some ground to discuss the moral direction of society with non-Christians, and we may often find points of agreement with them. But it would be a huge mistake to believe this could give a grounding for the moral vision of society. Once we recognize that the overlap of our moral vision with non-Christians is more a remnant of a lost Christian past (middle grace) than simply the neutral observations of nature, we know that unless a society repents and turns to Christ, we will eventually lose this moral vision. We already see that happening in our culture now. Without Christ, without God’s special revelation in the Scripture, without worship, a people cannot see clearly to behold the law that holds our world together.
You might be wondering, “Okay, this is some abstract theology; how does this shape us as a church?” I will answer that question in part two of this series. But I will begin by saying that it has huge ramifications for our approach to cultural change.
