Natural Law - No. 33
God’s order for creation.
“Good is that which all things seek after.” - Thomas Aquinas
There is a growing trend in our information-saturated world to act like right and wrong are whatever we feel like they are. Truth has increasingly become a personal choice, like which sports team to cheer for. We have so much information and scientific understanding of the world that we think we are more enlightened than history's past civilizations. In reality, we are just walking a well-worn path that creates social disorder and leads to societal collapse. A culture that embraces Individualized truth contradicts everything we have come to know about what causes nations, communities, and individuals to thrive.
Creation is organized around God’s order. On its simplest level, this is often called natural law. Every major religion, civilization, and philosophy has affirmed in some form the same objective system of value that defines good and evil, right and wrong. Without adhering to this natural law, a civilization will not exist. Natural law cannot be outlined like the laws that underpin our legal system. Instead, it consists of principles and truths we must live by. For instance, unjust aggression, breaking of promises, and taking other people's property all violate natural law. If a civilization does not protect human life, care for the poor and sick, nurture and raise children, and have honesty and integrity in government and business, then it cannot function, and evil grows.
"Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided. All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this”. - Thomas Aquinas
The theory of natural law was developed by Greek philosophers like Sophocles, Plato, and Aristotle. Cicero was one of Rome's greatest orators, philosophers, and writers. He is known for bringing Greek ideas about philosophy and natural law to Rome and later all of Western civilization. The United States of America was founded on fundamental principles of natural law developed by these great thinkers and others. Cicero said that there is a natural, universal, unchanging, and morally binding law that applies to all people and times. It supersedes human law and is true whether we recognize it as truth or not. Cicero died about 70 years before Jesus began his public ministry.
1,200 years later, Thomas Aquinas developed the most influential and systematic account of natural law (Summa Theologiae). He integrated Greek philosophy with Christian Theology and showed how God’s eternal order is the ultimate source of natural law. He said there are four types of law.
- Eternal Law (God’s eternal order for creation) - Sits at the apex and is God's plan for all of creation.
- Divine Law (God's teaching about how to live) - Guidance from God to help man navigate what he cannot understand.
- Natural Law (basic moral principles) - Man's participation in and understanding of eternal law.
- Human Law (our legal system) - How man tries to apply natural law to specific circumstances.
Aquinas taught that natural law is simply what man can see and understand of God’s eternal order that guides all of creation. He took it further and said that God’s teaching to man about how he should live is called divine law. Its purpose is to guide us towards union with God and eternal life. We cannot fully understand God’s order, but everything in nature operates in accordance with it. Some of this is self-evident, like we have an instinct to preserve human life, we are created to procreate and raise children, and we desire to know the truth. But God’s order is so much bigger than what we can see and understand of it, and that’s why God gave us His divine law to show us how to live in alignment with His eternal order for creation.
"The natural law is nothing else than the rational creature's participation in the eternal law.” - Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas also taught that there is another level of law, called human law, which is man's attempt to specifically guide society to function in alignment with natural law. Natural law says we need to protect human life, so human law makes tons of specific rules about what is and isn’t protecting human life. Not all human laws align with natural law, but that is their original purpose. Over time, most human laws become misguided as societies drift away from God’s divine order and, eventually, from the basic moral principles of natural law.
When Moses brought down the 10 commandments to the Israelites, they were not profoundly new principles for life; they had been self-evident for all of history. They were, instead, reminders of how God created man to live. These foundational truths had been obscured in the people's minds through hedonism and idolatry during their long enslavement in Egypt. In other words, Egyptian culture had baked into them, and they had forgotten how God told them to live.
For all of human history, the same natural law has guided every civilization, providing the necessary foundational moral principles that allow people to live in some measure of harmony with each other. Then Jesus showed up, and he gave them a new paradigm for a higher way of living. He flipped natural law on its head. In the Sermon on the Mount, he talked about how the real issue is not our actions but our hearts. This took natural law to a whole new level. Morality was no longer just about how we behaved; it was about who we were created to be and how we were created to live.
Jesus said, He didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. What He did was so much bigger than just fulfilling Jewish laws; He elevated mankind's understanding of morality. He gave the world the clearest picture it had ever had of God’s eternal order. He did this so that we could have a path to regaining our birthright and stepping into the eternal way of living we were made for. This is profound because natural law alone cannot create lasting order and good in the world. If it could, then civilizations wouldn’t collapse.
Humanity has a terrible tendency over time to obscure natural law by burying it under mountains of human laws. The problem is that you cannot legislate issues of the human heart through even the most advanced legal system. So time and again societies grew, prospered and then began the slow moral decay to collapse surrounded by their increasingly complex legal system. The natural law becomes obscured over time. The usual cause of societal collapse is leaders who pursue their own desires and reject the foundational moral principles of natural law, leaving their nation vulnerable to internal and external threats. Another way of saying this is that societal health is a heart issue for both the people and their leaders. Jesus gave the world a path to what it was created for, living in alignment with God’s law and His perfect order.
For societies to survive and thrive, they need benevolent leaders with integrity and honesty who put the good of others above their own needs and desires. The core issue in all of human history has been that benevolent leaders are so rare and hard to come by. When a culture loses sight of natural law, it steps out of alignment with God's order, and the people start looking to corrupt leaders who tell them what they want to hear instead of leaders who serve the good of others.
“I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.” - C.S. Lewis
This cycle was bound to repeat itself over and over until man finally destroyed himself, but Jesus offered us the key. He showed us the path to living in God’s eternal order. He brought the governing model of heaven to earth and showed us the way. Instead of obsessing over what's legal, obsess over what is true. Instead of grabbing for power, humble yourselves before me. The teachings of Jesus were not fancy theology; they were the blueprint for how we were created to live in the garden. He handed us the guidebook for every man's journey to reclaiming his birthright. It’s so much bigger than our personal freedom; it’s the path to our collective freedom as well. Man's role in life, on the most foundational level, is to be a steward and propagator of God’s eternal order on earth. When a man steps into his true identity, he is powerfully aligning himself with God’s eternal order for all of creation.
Our culture is redefining right and wrong like so many cultures before us. The real solution is not just to return to a better cultural awareness and understanding of natural law. The only true solution is to become benevolent leaders who operate out of God's divine order and bring it to earth in every environment we are in. The most positive turns in history have been shaped by leaders who put the good of others above selfish interest. People like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and William Wilberforce.
Natural law doesn’t dictate extreme self-sacrifice. That is the domain of eternal law, where the first are last and the weak are blessed. Benevolent leaders put the needs of others before themselves, and in so doing, they align themselves with God’s order. Jesus taught us this seemingly backward way of thinking and said it's the way of living we are created for. Every time someone actually does it, it disrupts the broken systems around them. They are like the light displacing the darkness, and as Jesus said, we are called to be the light of the world. We need more of those kinds of people in the world today, and that is not something that just happens naturally. It requires us to overcome our self-interest and self-obsession so we can align our thinking and way of living with God's eternal order. Jesus didn’t just give us a religion; He didn’t call us to remember natural law. He invited us to be reborn so that we can become benevolent leaders who can bring God’s order to the world around us.
- John Walt
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