Natural Law

[dimwhitt]

Natural Law is understood to be the moral conscience or perhaps moral compass God has given to all mankind apart from Scripture (i.e. murder is wrong) as evidenced by the rights and wrongs of societies and cultures over every time and continent and by which humanity has goverened itself.

 

[stray bullet]

Natural law is a lot more than a moral compass.

 

[ContentInHim]

Care to flesh out your statements, guys? This could be a very interesting thread!

 

[dimwhitt]

my hope is to genarate some discussion for 2 reasons

1 - it is a remarkably overlooked issue which addresses many of the great moral crisis' in Western Civ.

2 - i am writing a paper and wanted to see where peoples heads are about the issue

 

[dimwhitt]

i dont know that i could (or need to) define Natural Law beyond that because i am trying to wrap my own head around it all still

can u write a definition that suits ur understanding better Stray Bullet???

 

[MrSnow]

I believe that the clearest teaching on this in Scripture is in Romans.

Rom 1:19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Rom 1:20 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.

Rom 1:21 For although they knew God...

Rom 1:32 Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die...

Rom 2:12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law...

Rom 2:14 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.

Rom 2:15 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

Paul teaches us that to all people, no matter who they are, God has given, at the very least, two forms of revelation: His creation, through which His invisible attributes are made known; and His law which is written on our hearts. All people possess these. However, the rest of Rom 1 details how people have rejected them. And it is by them that those people will be judged.

 

[Stinker]

Oughtness. What we should or ought to do, or, what we should or ought not do.

This goes much deeper than what non-believers call just social convention. That people are taught since their youngest years, how to behave in society and that failure to behave as they ought results in guilt.

 

[billwald]

The use of "law" should be confined to legal matters. The problem arose back when theology was the "queen of sciences."

 

[dimwhitt]

law is an appropriate term
like the "Law of gravity"

 

[OldWiseGuy]

All sin is against God, but usually committed against fellow man.The repentant believer will be forgiven by God, and will forgive others their trespasses. Unbelieving fellow man probably won't forgive you and you would carry your guilt your entire life, even to your grave. This would make it difficult for you to forgive yourself and move on. God removes the burden of guilt from us that fellow man won't.

All have the knowledge of good and evil and are always choosing between the two (situation ethics), but the Christian is guided by the divine nature through the indwelling holy spirit, which chooses to do right in all situations, whether public or private, without regard to personal interest. We don't 'excuse' ourselves of wrongdoing.

When the unconverted 'do the things of the law' they are doing the things of the old covenant (but only to the extent of their culture/convention), not the new. This is the true distinction between them and us.

Another point about the 'Law'. All nations know that they must have laws to keep order, and those laws are the same everywhere because the problems that they address are common to man everywhere. God told Israel that he would make of them a great nation because they would actually obey these universal laws, not because these laws were unique to them only.

The reason a nation goes into decline is because they don't obey their own laws. America is a good example of this. Our laws are so full of holes they look like Swiss cheese.

 

[dimwhitt]

back to the topic

 

[dies-l]

my hope is to genarate some discussion for 2 reasons

1 - it is a remarkably overlooked issue which addresses many of the great moral crisis' in Western Civ.

2 - i am writing a paper and wanted to see where peoples heads are about the issue

Natural law has been used to refer to many different schools of legal thought that hold that there is some basis inherent in the human person from which we can determine a basic legal code. Is there a specific natural law school that you are thinking about? I went to an uber-Catholic law school that was very heavy into Thomas Aquinas and his version of natural law thinking, which I believe is quite compelling, and we could discuss this. Or were you thinking of the topic more generally or a different natural law school altogethr?

 

[dimwhitt]

i would love to talk about Aquinas
he is the anchor in the discussion
everything comes back to him

What is it?
How do we know its real?
What difference does it make?