THE COLLAPSE OF THE CONCEPT OF NATURAL
LAW

ROMANS 2:14–16

Since they [the Gentiles] show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them

(Romans 2:15).

As we continue our consideration of some of the broader issues related to Romans 2:15, we want to look specifically at what happens when a society rejects God’s eternal law and its mirror, the natural law.

Rejection of biblical or eternal law

If we look back in Church history, we see that the turn of the eighteenth century was a crisis point resulting from the “guns of philosophy” firing at the older Christian synthesis or worldview. This was the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, a period of skepticism concerning man’s ability to know the eternal law of God.

Many thinkers who were most critical of biblical or eternal law nevertheless realized that there had to be some objective standard for law. If there were no objective standard by which to gauge the justness of the law, then law codes would begin to reflect only the arbitrary desires of certain power groups. So men like John Locke, William Blackstone, and others in the eighteenth century were very careful to formulate a secular concept of natural law that would be the basis of government.

Rejection of natural law

Today you would be fortunate to find even three law schools in America that have a course on natural law. This is because nineteenth century secular thinkers critiqued not only eternal law but also natural law. Thus, the whole concept of natural law finds no favor among philosophers and students of jurisprudence.

The work of a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894), was largely responsible for this. Justice Holmes came to the conclusion that it is impossible for human beings ever to know any supreme, absolute, objective law. Thus all laws must simply be a reflection of whatever the majority or the strongest group in a given society wants. The influence of Holmes’s view has meant a crisis in legal ethics that continues to our day.

CORAM DEO

God hears the prayers of Christians for their land. Today pray for our national leaders, governors and judges, that they will begin ruling on the basis of God’s absolutes as reflected in natural law.

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march