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“In a vast majority of responses and observations, the concept of natural law today turns out to be, in different cultural contexts, highly problematic, if not completely incomprehensible.”

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In other words, the way to make reason more comprehensible in today’s world is through revelation. I suppose this comports with St. Anselm’s thousand-year-old notion of “faith seeking understanding.” But it doesn’t say much for natural law as a self-sufficient, universally graspable system of thought

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Originally posted by *Leon*:
I'm sure there was a recent-ish thread on natural law, but I can't find it right now.

One thing I've never got my head round is how natural law claims to interact with the scientific method. Natural law involves observing the world and drawing inferences from what you observe. Science claims to have a method of observing the world which is, under certain conditions, better than alternatives. There are a number of issues on which (most) people who use science seem to reach different conclusions than (most) people who use natural law.

Now it could be that proponents of natural law are happy with the scientific method but go on to draw moral conclusions that are outside the scope of science. That would be fine, but it would mean that it'd be reasonable to ask what scientific beliefs (i.e. facts about nature) are the foundation of particular bits of natural law, so that we could revisit the natural law if our relevant understanding of nature changed.

It could also be that there is a distinct difference between the manner in which you need to observe the world to do natural law and the manner in which you need to observe the world in order to do science. If that was the case, it would be very helpful if proponents of natural law did a better job of explaining why their manner of observing must differ and how it differs.

As it is, it's easy to mistake natural law for science that's 700 years out of date.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Isn't natural law a philosophical conclusion, not a scientific one?

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Originally posted by *Leon*:
It could also be that there is a distinct difference between the manner in which you need to observe the world to do natural law and the manner in which you need to observe the world in order to do science. If that was the case, it would be very helpful if proponents of natural law did a better job of explaining why their manner of observing must differ and how it differs.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by *Leon*:
It could also be that there is a distinct difference between the manner in which you need to observe the world to do natural law and the manner in which you need to observe the world in order to do science. If that was the case, it would be very helpful if proponents of natural law did a better job of explaining why their manner of observing must differ and how it differs.

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I think the basic difference is that science explicit rules out ethic and similar considerations while it's doing it.

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So the proponent of natural law would say that taking the world as observed by science and then drawing moral conclusions from it would be like deliberately using black and white film, and then trying to draw conclusions about the colour.

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The language traditionally used in explaining the term “natural law” should be improved so that the values of the Gospel can be communicated to people today in a more intelligible manner. In particular, the vast majority of responses and an even greater part of the observations request that more emphasis be placed on the role of the Word of God as a privileged instrument in the conception of married life and the family, and recommend greater reference to the Bible, its language and narratives. In this regard, respondents propose bringing the issue to public discussion and developing the idea of biblical inspiration and the “order in creation,” which could permit a re-reading of the concept of the natural law in a more meaningful manner in today’s world (cf. the idea of the law written in the human heart in Rm 1:19-21; 2:14-15). Moreover, this proposal insists on using language which is accessible to all, such as the language of symbols utilized during the liturgy. The recommendation was also made to engage young people directly in these matters.

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Originally posted by shamwari:
Evensong: Please explain in what sense and how creation is 'fallen'. I know Paul said it. Is he infallible?

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Originally posted by Russ:
The article defines Natural Law as (universal moral law) that is a) somehow built into the universe
b) accessible by reason.
So that it gives a standard of conduct that those who've never heard the Gospel in any form can reasonably be expected to live up to.

So for example, at risk of incurring the Wrath of Godwin, the Nuremburg trials decided that certain war crimes were such that the perpetrators should have known that they were morally wrong, despite living in a culture which approved them. [...]

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
I don't think Natural Law is a philosophical conclusion. It is a philosophical position (possibly theological) that starts with an assumption that moral rights and wrongs can be determined from observation of nature. I can't see how observation of nature, no matter how careful, can result in one reaching that position, hence my conclusion that it isn't a conclusion.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
There are some differences between science and natural law. First, science doesn't assume that nature has anything to say about morality.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Second, though natural law may draw upon scientific findings by nature (pun intended) it can't depend upon a technical understanding of scientific discoveries - natural law has to be able to say "it's obvious that ..." for it to have any validity. To take up the Nuremburg example already cited, if the basis of saying the Nazi's should have known that what they were doing was wrong depended upon understanding technical scientific details then there's no basis for saying they "should have known", natural law has to be based on observations anyone can make without the benefit of a scientific education.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
I don't think Natural Law is a philosophical conclusion. It is a philosophical position (possibly theological) that starts with an assumption that moral rights and wrongs can be determined from observation of nature. I can't see how observation of nature, no matter how careful, can result in one reaching that position, hence my conclusion that it isn't a conclusion.

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That is not quite right. It would be more accurate to say that there are philosophical positions, famously but not exclusively Aristotelianism, which believe that all things have so called "final causes". That is to say, all things have an aim or purpose that in part determines what they are. (There are three other such fundamental classes of causes in Aristotelianism: material, formal, and efficient.) ... From this one can draw a wide range of conclusions

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
There are some differences between science and natural law. First, science doesn't assume that nature has anything to say about morality.

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This is not quite accurate either. Both in a historical and philosophical sense, modern science is based on a more or less conscious decision to study only what Aristotelianism would call material and efficient causes. That is to say, to study only the properties of matter and its interactions.

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It is unsurprising that many natural scientists then eventually came to the conclusion that there is in fact nothing but material and efficient causes, only matter and its interactions. But that is in fact a philosophical statement, not one that is itself part of natural science.

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The "natural" in question here is not a synonym for "common sense". There is no a priori reason that a natural moral law analysis should be any less difficult and sophisticated than a physical law analysis. It is entirely possible that there is natural moral law reasoning that only a genius of Einstein's level could ever come up with, and that is only truly appreciated and understand by perhaps a few thousand experts after.

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In which case you seem to be agreeing that natural law is incomprehensible, except to those very few "Einstein level" geniuses. Which makes natural law arguments regarding ethics and morality into the realm of a purely academic exercise.

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I always tend to wonder where "natural law" fits in with the fact that St Paul says creation is also fallen in Romans.
If creation is also "fallen", how can we discern ethics from it?

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Originally posted by Gildas:
To that extent I don't think that natural law ethics are that different from any other account of moral (or, indeed, non-moral) reasoning.

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Originally posted by shamwari:
Evensong: Please explain in what sense and how creation is 'fallen'. I know Paul said it. Is he infallible?

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Originally posted by *Leon*:
But you could build an ethical framework that relied on scientific results for its justification, even if science rules out ethical considerations. For instance, if you took science as it existed 100 years ago, you would see no ethical reason for restricting the sale of Uranium. Today, scientific advances mean that restricting the sale of uranium seems very natural.

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Originally posted by Enoch:
As I understand it, natural law is the idea that there are ethics that are built into humanity as part of human nature. If you are a theist, it is difficult to argue against that. If you are a Christian, it is impossible.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
In which case you seem to be agreeing that natural law is incomprehensible, except to those very few "Einstein level" geniuses.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
If you wish to convince people of a particular moral position then you need to do that in a way that they can understand, if natural law arguments can only be understood by a very small number of people then in reality you are not arguing from natural law, but for an intellectual elite to have an authority to dictate morality.

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Originally posted by shamwari:
Evensong: Please explain in what sense and how creation is 'fallen'. I know Paul said it. Is he infallible?

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Originally posted by Kwesi:
Evensong

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I always tend to wonder where "natural law" fits in with the fact that St Paul says creation is also fallen in Romans.
If creation is also "fallen", how can we discern ethics from it?

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Evensong, I think St Paul would make a distinction between knowing what is good and right and having the desire and inclination to do it. Indeed, as you know, he said of himself:
“I do not do the good I want to, but the evil I do not want to do- this I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:19).

Paul sets out his fundamental position in Romans 1: 19+

“What may be known about God is plain to them [the Gentiles], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse..... but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened......They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator... They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.... Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”

In other words, for Paul, God’s natural law has been made known to the whole of humanity, whose non-Jewish members cannot, therefore, claim invincible ignorance of it and avoid God’s displeasure when they break it.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
As I understand it, natural law is the idea that there are ethics that are built into humanity as part of human nature. If you are a theist, it is difficult to argue against that. If you are a Christian, it is impossible.

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One could argue against that.
There was an important debate in the late middle ages between a largely Dominican tradition (e.g. Aquinas) and a largely Franciscan tradition (e.g. Occam) about whether or not God had built ethics into humanity. The Dominicans said yes. The Franciscans said no, that would impair God's freedom to give us commands as God pleases.
For example, if one considers infanticide, the Dominican position would be that given human nature infanticide must be wrong. On the other hand, the Franciscans would say that God can create or abolish the duty to care for children as God pleases. (I don't know whether Aquinas ever explicitly addresses the question of God commanding Abraham to kill Isaac: that's more difficult to account for on the Dominican tradition.)

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

There was an important debate in the late middle ages between a largely Dominican tradition (e.g. Aquinas) and a largely Franciscan tradition (e.g. Occam) about whether or not God had built ethics into humanity. The Dominicans said yes. The Franciscans said no, that would impair God's freedom to give us commands as God pleases.
For example, if one considers infanticide, the Dominican position would be that given human nature infanticide must be wrong. On the other hand, the Franciscans would say that God can create or abolish the duty to care for children as God pleases.

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Sounds like an argument for God's sovereignty rather than God's ordered revelation through creation.

I believe that was the philosophical shift of Nominalism.

Tended to cater to a sense of God's capriciousness and unreliability that veered away from Scholasticism.

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If only Abraham had known enough to turn around to that voice that told him to sacrifice Isaac, and say "Get thee behind me Satan, the Lord desires not the blood of the innocent" or words to that effect.

But of course, that would be anachronism, being a Christian before Christ.

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Further, the slaying of the innocent, adultery, and theft are against the natural law. But we find these things changed by God: as when God commanded Abraham to slay his innocent son (Genesis 22:2); and when he ordered the Jews to borrow and purloin the vessels of the Egyptians (Exodus 12:35); and when He commanded Osee to take to himself "a wife of fornications" (Hosea 1:2). Therefore the natural law can be changed.

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All men alike, both guilty and innocent, die the death of nature: which death of nature is inflicted by the power of God on account of original sin, according to 1 Samuel 2:6: "The Lord killeth and maketh alive." Consequently, by the command of God, death can be inflicted on any man, guilty or innocent, without any injustice whatever. In like manner adultery is intercourse with another's wife; who is allotted to him by the law emanating from God. Consequently intercourse with any woman, by the command of God, is neither adultery nor fornication. The same applies to theft, which is the taking of another's property. For whatever is taken by the command of God, to Whom all things belong, is not taken against the will of its owner, whereas it is in this that theft consists. Nor is it only in human things, that whatever is commanded by God is right; but also in natural things, whatever is done by God, is, in some way, natural, as stated in the I, 105, 6, ad 1.

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While its generally known in Christians circles that human nature is "fallen" its much less generally known that Paul things our natural surroundings are also fallen.

So as mousetheif says, I wonder how proponents of natural law fit this in in terms of determining God's will from the observation of nature (not us).

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If only Abraham had known enough to turn around to that voice that told him to sacrifice Isaac, and say "Get thee behind me Satan, the Lord desires not the blood of the innocent" or words to that effect.

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Originally posted by Kwesi:

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If only Abraham had known enough to turn around to that voice that told him to sacrifice Isaac, and say "Get thee behind me Satan, the Lord desires not the blood of the innocent" or words to that effect.

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Re Abraham and Isaac: I don’t think the story should be read literally. To my mind it is an incident, even parable, designed to indicate that human sacrifice is not part of the the Jewish (or whatever) religious script. IMO we are to read it that Abraham thinks that his God demands human sacrifice, but is disabused. If that is so, Russ, then Abraham acts as you suggest he should have done!

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Originally posted by Gildas:
Ockham had his faults but he spent most of his career objecting vociferously to theologies which stressed God's arbitrary power rather than emphasising it.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
On the other hand, the Franciscans would say that God can create or abolish the duty to care for children as God pleases.

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I think I prefer St. Francis to the Franciscans in this case...

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My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
In the time of Abraham it was culturally acceptable to offer human - and especially child - sacrifice: see the worship of Molech. When Abraham, a beginner when it came to the personality and purposes of the one true God, was asked to sacrifice his son he would have taken the instruction in exactly the same way as the other heathens around him at that time. It was an accepted part of many religious superstitions. Abraham was going to obey because it was not an unusual request.

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Originally posted by Russ:
Seems to me that if you believe in Natural Law then Abraham is down there with the concentration camp guards, condemned by the same reasoning.

Or else you believe that Natural Law allows "believing that one does it for God" as a valid excuse. This seems to be Aquinas' position as quoted above by Gildas. Which makes the Taliban the most moral people on earth...

You see my problem...

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Originally posted by IngoB:
The real question has always been how you can know that it is God who orders you to do these things, and not the world, the flesh or the devil.

...How did Abraham know that it was God talking to Him, not the world, the flesh or the devil? Because Isaac was a pure miracle, promised and given by God - and the world, the flesh and the devil cannot work miracles.

...And if voices in your church or in your head tell you that you should do this, then see if they can work miracles. It's a simple test...

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Originally posted by IngoB:
For that matter, God did not in the end ask for Isaac to be sacrificed, He just tested Abraham's willingness. And what God did there was of course to give a spiritual lesson to us (for God writes history like a human author writes a story). Abraham was asked to kill the very promise of God to him, it was a test whether Abraham would still trust in God even if God ordered him to destroy his hope.

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Originally posted by Russ:
So I don't go along with the idea that religiously-motivated murder is OK so long as its our religion telling us who's for the sacrificial knife but horrendously evil when it's their religion telling them.

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Originally posted by Russ:
Natural Law theory puts morality at a level where it's not about "my religion is better than yours". If that's your bottom line then you don't believe in Natural Law.

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Originally posted by Dave W.:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Abraham was asked to kill the very promise of God to him, it was a test whether Abraham would still trust in God even if God ordered him to destroy his hope.

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What lesson are we to draw from Abraham's test, do you think?

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Originally posted by IngoB:
I have a PhD in theoretical physics, I am a working scientist. I also believe in miracles. If you believe that the latter compromises the former, then in my opinion you simply have not understood what physical law really is. The same is true here, for the case of natural moral law.

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I don't know what you'd call the philosophy that such-an-such an act is morally right when we do it, 'cos we're the good guys, but evil if anybody else does it to us. But that's the human condition; that's our "fallen" nature talking. That's what we have to avoid if we want to be moral people.

So I don't go along with the idea that religiously-motivated murder is OK so long as its our religion telling us who's for the sacrificial knife but horrendously evil when it's their religion telling them.

Natural Law theory puts morality at a level where it's not about "my religion is better than yours". If that's your bottom line then you don't believe in Natural Law.

Isaac was a person, not a treasured possession. And that's why it would have been wrong for Abraham to kill him. And that's why it was wrong for Abraham to intend to kill him.

Did Abraham know that ? Natural Law implies that he did. That moral "knowledge" is more certain than religious "knowledge", because those who have completely the wrong ideas on religion can still be held to account for the morality of their actions.

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Originally posted by Gildas:
There is a reason that the most formidable critic of natural law in the modern era was a dedicated opponent of National Socialism.

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Who?

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My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
I think your position is not exactly that of Aquinas. (Although Aquinas was not infallible; still less are Roman Catholics obliged to believe he is.) Aquinas is arguing that God is not abridging the natural law. The natural law says that all human beings are deserving of the death penalty at the hands of an appropriate authority. The appropriate authority is God. Under ordinary circumstances, humans do not have the authority to exercise the death penalty on God's behalf. However, on this particular occasion, God explicitly delegated his authority to Abraham.

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