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How Then Shall We Live: Can Natural Law Mitigate Our Moral Mess?
Part 1
The law is good, if one uses it lawfully”[1]
“The work of the law is written on their hearts”[2]
“[Is] the law sin? By no means!”[3]
“In your light do we see light”[4]
“Napalming babies is bad.
Starving the poor is wicked.
Buying and selling each other is depraved. . .
There is in the world such a thing as evil.
[All together now:] Sez who? God help us[5]”
Face it. The world is a moral mess. Sexual chaos;[6] political extremism with a fetish for debt;[7] Christians dabbling in rank paganism, “mostly for entertainment;”[8]and the church’s tragic importation of faux masculinity and racism.[9] How do we navigate these “middle times” between Cross and Consummation? Recently, the “retrievalist” enterprise has been advocating for a return to Protestant natural law and related reasoning.[10] Aside from risking the elevation of history above Scripture,[11] can the promise of natural law deliver at the retail level? Is natural law a workable remedy for our moral morass? Can it benefit our constitutional considerations? Let’s get to the gist.
Natural Law: A Needed Conversation
Francis Schaeffer rightly quipped that the problem with evangelicals is that they see (and think) in parts and not totals.[12] This is increasingly true in a broader sense when considering public justice and today’s law profession culture where the moral rubber meets the unethical road: hyper-specialization, legal positivism, legal realism, critical legal studies et al all contribute to this as they detach law from transcendent truths,[13] authority, and the permanent things,[14] and thus over time these truncated and piecemeal legal methodologies tend to undermine human flourishing – and justice.
Is natural law jurisprudence an important path for correcting these trends? Does it work outside the Ivory Tower? Spoiler alert: Answer: Yes, sort of and sometimes. And so, the conversation begins.
Natural Law Over the Ages in Life and Law
Natural law enjoys a rich and long pedigree, crossing time and cultures: The Greeks (Sophocles and Aristotle), the Romans (Ciero), early and medieval Christianity (Augustine and Aquinas). And, within the academy today, a renaissance of sorts is occurring in natural law thinking and jurisprudence.[15] But this recent development has not viably migrated into the retail level of practicing law through litigation, advocacy, and counseling. Yet, natural law thinking enjoys a history in American jurisprudence and legal practice. While it’s mostly dormant in today’s legal practice, natural law is not an historical outlier. Natural law should not be viewed as an alien invader. The question posed, however, is this: Should natural law be revived and deployed by law practitioners? Are the retrievalists onto something? Have they found a moral panacea, or something approaching it?
A Brief Biographical Excursus: 40 Years a Lawyer Who Studies Theology
My training stems from the presuppositional apologetic approach of Cornelius Van Til and his students, several of whom were my mentors and friends.[16] Peter Jones, the TxC Founder, follows in this intellectual tradition as well. Now, to be sure, Van Til possessed a dim view of natural law,[17] and Frame, Van Til’s successor and Peter’s dear friend and colleague, raised serious questions about its efficacy as well.[18] And, yet, here I am a lawyer and law professor who formally studies – and applies – theology in the role of leading TxC in cultural apologetics. What’s to be done?
Integrating law, and in particular, law practice, and theology, has proven both interesting and fruitful. For example, understanding epistemology[19] greatly helped in constructing cross-examinations to “pull the rug out” from under opposing witnesses and experts and by identifying fallacious contentions advanced in litigation.[20]
I then entered the non-profit world after 15 years of “Big Law” practice. There, I was charged with developing and executing a program to form and train Christian law students. I designed a curriculum to address the deceits and deficits of standard legal education using Psalm 78 as a template for impacting future generations.[21] One of the deficits, engendered by legal positivism, legal realism, and later, critical legal studies, centered on the lack of any transcendent moral standard for “doing law.” I needed a resource to introduce and serve this philosophical cookie on the bottom shelf to law students lacking theological and philosophical formation. They assuredly were not getting anything like this from their law school classes, nor from most of their churches.
Though a committed presuppostionalist with an admitted mild skepticism to natural law thinking, I commissioned and edited a key volume to (re)-introduce moral transcendence to these students.[22] I figuratively picked up a non-preferred “foreign weapon” and began training others to use it.[23] While its sights, scope, and optics may be off and its lethality at distance less than optimal, it could still be effective in some contexts.[24]
What are the contours of doing this? What are the pitfalls and limitations of doing this. What are the benefits for doing this and how can they be maximized and navigated in a way that avoids both the Scylla and Charybdis, that is, treating natural law as either a pious panacea or a profitless pitfall?
Three Preliminary – Yet Important – Distinctions
Before assessing the natural law’s utility vis a vis “cases and controversies,”[25] prudence demands keeping three distinctions in mind. First, understand natural law as fact. In other words, natural law is the claim that the cosmos is created and morally ordered, and that order can be apprehended at some level by reason. Scripture demonstrates this point in several ways. Psalm 19 informs us that:
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In them he has set a tent for the sun,[26]
Psalm 8 alludes to the relationship between the Creation and knowledge of God’s handiwork in it.[27] Paul speaks about the moral regularity of Creation:
Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.[28]
Paul also describes how even unbelieving Gentiles possess some knowledge of God as Creator:
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.[29]
In fact, this general moral knowledge is “imprinted” in each human:
For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them[30]
The foregoing texts outline the prima facie fact of natural law. This point – the fact of natural law – needs to be distinguished, however, from the various and sometimes divergent theories of natural law, our second key distinction.[31] As both Christians and pagans have contemplated this fact of moral knowledge, explanations for it have taken many forms over the millennia. These include the Thomistic approach of Aquinas, the “New” natural Law approach of Finnis and his followers, the “mere” natural law approach of Arkes, and various pagan approaches.[32] Here’s the point: Explaining natural law does not equate to employing natural law at the retail level. Volleying natural law theories like pickle ball does not resolve the extant moral issues. Put bluntly, one ought not trounce into the public arena – – let alone court – seeking X result because that’s what the “seven human goods” of John Finnis require.[33]
The plot thickens, however: These various theories compete and often clash, particularly regarding the role, if any, Scripture plays in doing moral exegesis. This is true even among Christian natural law advocates. One of the key proponents of natural law candidly puts it this way:
Even among Christian philosophers the doctrine of natural law often fails to measure up. Either it focuses on matters peripheral to the text and the device of the heart, or it wanders from its scriptural foundation. To one degree or another these have been flaws of almost all previous natural-law theorizing, including my own – and nearly all books about it, perhaps including the present one.[34]
What is the relationship between Scripture and natural law precepts? The theories conflict and this produces uncertainty, if not confusion. Should Scripture be consulted or cabined? How does one handle – and in what priority – the availability of both natural law and Scripture? Do both apply? If so, does one trump the other? When and how?
The third distinction to maintain involves whether natural law is a tool or a goal. If the former, we can incorporate natural law precepts instrumentally so as to achieve just results by acceptable, if not optimal, means. If the latter, then the push would be to constitutionally codify Aquinas or Finnis. Tool and goal should not be confused, particularly if it devolves into spawning party-spirit factions: I am of Thomas, I am of Finnis, I am of Arkes.[35]
If one (1) resolves the methodological challenges; (2) avoids the sideshow of party-spirit factions and competing theories; and (3) navigates the gauntlet of special and general revelation, obstacles of varying degrees remain to employing natural law at the retail level. What are they and how significant are they?
For that analysis, we will wait until next week. And, as we shall see, informed wisdom, which the retrievalists trumpet, actually teaches that any unvarnished enthusiasm and cheer-leading for natural law at the retail level should be dampened.
[1] 1 Tim. 1:8
[2] Romans 2:15
[3] Romans 7:7
[4] Ps. 36:9b
[5] Arthur Allen Leff, Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law, https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2724&context=dlj
[6] https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2025/05/13/diddy-timeline-sexual-assault-lawsuits/83414079007/
[7] https://www.newsweek.com/trump-big-beautiful-bill-cbo-debt-deficit-2080889
[8] https://www.christianpost.com/news/more-than-a-quarter-of-christians-believe-in-astrology-study.html
[9] Will Spencer, The Dangerous Secret Your Young Men Are Keeping: Neo-Nazi Thought Has Entered Your Church, https://christoverall.com/article/longform/the-dangerous-secret-your-young-men-are-keeping-neo-nazi-thought-has-entered-the-church/
[10] See, e.g., https://davenantinstitute.org/natural-law/. Pockets of the under-educated manosphere are likewise splashing around in the wading pool claiming great insight from Aristotle and the natural law tradition to support their Kinist views.
[11] Jeffery J. Ventrella, Idols of History: Is Older or Newer Better? https://truthxchange.com/idols-of-history-is-older-or-newer-better/
[12] Francis Schaefer, A Christian Manifesto (1981), 17
[13] No small contributor to this is the influence of John Rawls’ notion of “public reason” which asserts that comprehensive narratives (other than his own, evidently) should play no role in determining public policy. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, (1999, revised edition). It’s been postulated that “New” Natural Law theory arose in part to meet Rawls’ challenge on its own terms.
[14] Russel Kirk, Enemies of the Permanent Things: Observations in Abnormity in Literature and Politics (1969)
[15] John Fiinnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980), Hadley, Arkes, First Things: An Inquiry Into the First Principles of Morals and Justice (1986); Robert P. George, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality (1995); J. Budziszewski, Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law (1997); Charles Rice, 50 Questions on the Natural Law: What it Is and Why We Need it (1999); Russell Hittinger, The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World (2007); John Lawrence Hill, After The Natural Law – How the Classical Worldview Supports Our Modern Moral and Political Values (2016)
[16] These include J. Peter Vosteen, Greg L. Bahnsen, John M. Frame, and Alfred J. Poirier.
[17] See, e.g., Thomas K. Johnson, Cornelius Van Til and the Natural Moral Law, https://www.academia.edu/37371652/Cornelius_Van_Til_and_the_Natural_Moral_Law
[18] See, e.g., John Frame, Is Natural Revelation Sufficient to Govern Culture? https://frame-poythress.org/is-natural-revelation-sufficient-to-govern-culture/. See, also, John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life, (2008), 243-250.
[19] John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (1987)
[20] Jeffery J. Ventrella, “Identifying and Refuting Fallacious Argument,”For the Defense (December 1995)
[21] That Psalm informs us that if one seeks to influence our children’s children, he needs to have them study God, His works, and His law. This triad reflects John Frame’s perspectival taxonomy: Person – Situation -Norm. See, John M. Frame, A Primer on Perspectivalism (2012), https://frame-poythress.org/a-primer-on-perspectivalism/
[22] J. Budziszewski, Natural Law for Lawyers (2006)
[23] Though I am convinced and committed to an optimistic eschatology, the present state of the legal ecosystem would not reasonably permit lawyers to tell the judge “the Bible says so.” The Overton window first needed to shift, and reintroducing natural law concepts began to do just that. Just as Lewis’ Abolition of Man did this for the general culture in 1942, I hoped this work would contribute to doing the same in the law profession culture.
[24]Consider this analogy. Two of our sons have been commissioned as USMC Infantry Officers – When they are down river, that is, deployed, and chaos ensues, if their weapon jams or lacks ammo and they see a neutralized enemy’s functional weapon, they don’t say: “well, that’s not what we use, and it’s not my rifle preference, so forget it” . . . No, they pick it up and use it to ventilate the enemy even with the weapon’s inherent limitations and defects, despite its not being their personal preference.
[25] U.S. Constitution, Art. III, Section 2
[26] Ps. 19:1-4
[27] Ps. 8:1,3
[28] Gal. 6:7-9
[29] Romans 1:19-21
[30] Romans 2:14-15
[31] This point is not unlike the various competing theories regarding Christian apologetics: Van Til’s presuppostionalist approach, Montgomery’s evidentialist approach, Protestant scholasticism’s classical approach, Clark’s axiomatic presuppostionalist approach, Craig’s rationalistic approach, et al.
[32] For a pre-Aristotelian example consider Antigone by Sophocles: Antigone wrestles with whether to obey the King’s law (Creon) –“don’t’ bury the traitorous brother” or the natural law – “honor your brother and bury him.”
[33] https://uollb.com/blogs/uol/finniss-seven-basic-human-goods. And naturally, no faithful follower of Finnis would consider doing such a clunky and inept thing.
[34] J. Budziszewski, Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law (1997), 186
[35] In some ways, this is reminiscent of and analogous to “worship war” debates regarding which Psalter – red or blue – should be used in regulated worship.