In this post, I want to give some initial thoughts on natural law itself and the recent recovery of natural law.

  1. Reading many contemporary proponents of natural law, I am impressed by their ability to interact with 16th and 17th century sources.  They are particularly impressive in their understanding of the protestant scholastics and their forebears. They give a robust defense of natural law as something biblical. Further, they prove that natural has the stamp of the best of Christian tradition.  Unfortunately, I don’t see a willingness to critically interact with classical natural law theory of the 16th and 17th century.  It may be that the proponents of the 16th and 17th century got natural law right.  Even if they did, there should be room to talk about natural law with greater specificity than those in the past.  Natural law can be a highly ambiguous term.
  2.  (a) One of the most egregious examples of an inability to interact with natural law critically is the lack of interaction with the Van Tillian critique of natural law.  I realize that the Van Tillian critique is guilty of a dependence on bad historiagraphy.  Van Til relied on a poor reading of Thomas Aquinas, as well, as a poor historical understanding of the development of natural law.  Even so they were dealing with a contemporary form of natural law that had twisted what the Protestant scholastics taught.  Contemporaries of Van Til would use their theories of natural law to undermine the faith.   (b) This lack of interaction is combined with a lack of understanding: Van Til was dealing with men who were using natural law to defend things like old earth creationism and liberalism in the churches in general.  I say this, not to exonerate Van Til and Rushdoony, but to give context to what he was fighting.
  3. This thesis is more of a pet peeve of mine.  If natural law is a reality then unbelievers also have access to God’s truth in their interactions with God’s world.  This means Christians can learn from unbelievers, who had many things wrong about God.  My thesis is this: contemporary unbelievers should be just as helpful in finding truth, perhaps even more so, as past unbelievers.
  4. Now we come to the critique of classical natural law theory.  I want to argue that natural law is an aspect of God’s relationship to his creation, not a particular something in itself.  In my reading so far I have not seen a clear recognition of this in the scholastics.  If this is not clearly laid out natural law can slowly be separated from God and gain an authority of its own.  It can begin to compete with the Scriptures as a source of authority.  If we immediately define as an aspect of God’s relationship, this becomes impossible.
  5. Against the Protestant Scholastics, I want to argue that natural law is mutable. If the cosmos changes, natural law changes.  This is a change in creation relative to God that changes the configuration of natural law.  One example would be the necessity of sacrifice after Adam fell into sin.   This was because the human race changed in relation to God.
  6. Behind all this is a certain theory of the universe.  We can think of the universe in terms of a puzzle or legos. A world made on the analogy of legos contains a number of possibilities for design.  A box of legos has the potential for several different shapes.  The natural law legos can be kept in the same configuration even if the rest of the legos are re-configurated.  If creation is more like a puzzle, then each piece is contingent on the other pieces.  If a part of the puzzle is re-configurated then the whole puzzle is reconfigurated.  Natural law is the aspect of “rightly fitting together” according to the maker’s design.   Like the legos, the puzzle pieces have reality in themselves. Unlike the legos they are contingent on one another for the completeness of the puzzle.  I argue that the universe is a puzzle. (I wonder if this is behind Van Til’s argument that unbelievers cannot have capital-T truth.  Van Til thinks of truth radically contingent on knowing Christ as the centre and expllanation of the universe.  The problem with this is that you can still know part of the puzzle as something that is truly part of the puzzle.  You just don’t have the key to the puzzle; Jesus Christ.  It is a hermeneutical problem, not an epistomological problem.)
  7. My boldest thesis: I would suggest that the term “created order” replace the term “natural law.”  I believe that the understanding of the term “natural law” can quickly turn to a semi-autonomous force. In reality, “natural law” is radically contingent on the creator.  The term “created order” emphasizes that contingency.