Laws of Nature and Nature’s God

Christianity is more than personal piety – it is a comprehensive worldview. That worldview is as natural in the faith community as gravity is in the physical world. It is inherent in Christianity, yet exists apart from Christianity. It is a part of Christianity though Christianity is far more. It is Natural Law. For ages it has been known by various names: Practical Reason, First Principles, Traditional Morality, and more recently simply as Tao. 

Examples of Natural Law and Christianity running on parallel tracks are: private property rights, standards for social decency, values of compassion, mercy, kindness, forgiveness, prohibitions against lying, murdering, cheating, and stealing. These are but a few of the parallel truths. Many persons not of the faith community advocate Natural Law. It is the source of all value judgments. It predates Christianity and exists in non-Christian societies.

Much of the writings of Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates are based on them. Roman Emperor Cicero (106 – 43 BC) wrote of them saying, “true law is right reason consonant with nature, diffused among all men, constant and eternal.” He wrote of its benefits being “the safety of citizens … and the tranquility and happiness of human life.” He also wrote of true justice as being rooted in divinely-established universal principles, that is Natural Law.

John Adams, in the Federalist Papers argues the Laws of Nature and of nature’s God are the same in this statement: “In the Declaration of Independence the Laws of Nature are announced and appealed to as identical with the laws of nature’s God, and as the foundation of all obligatory human laws.”

The next time a new Jurist of the Supreme Court is nominated, observe the fight by the left to avoid the appointment of one who believes in the Laws of Nature.

Often today when a Christian advocates a Natural Law in the public arena it is shouted down under the guise of separation of Church and State. Humanists have made great progress in recent years by defying Natural Laws regarding marriage and sex in general.

This modern translation of God’s Word speaks of Natural Law in these words: “When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong.” (Romans 2:14,15)