Grounded by Christian natural law
This is part one of a five part exploration of natural law, introducing Christian natural law from the perspective of John Locke.
Part two is a very brief sketch of natural law concepts from Classical to Postmodern times.
Part three describes the demise of Christian natural law in the US, and it’s replacement with radical viewpoint neutral secularism, which “post-liberal” conservatives mistakenly blame on Lockean liberalism.
Part four discusses Leo Strauss’s role in discrediting John Locke and Christian natural law.
Part five finishes with my dream for a revitalized conservatism, not “post-liberal” but a return to Locke’s vision of a balance between liberalism and Christian natural law.
In 1938, when philosopher Eric Voegelin dodged the Nazis in Vienna and came to America, he was struck by the stark difference in culture and political philosophy between Europe and the US, commenting later that
“…there was the background of the great political foundation of 1776 and 1789, and of the unfolding of this founding act through a political and legal culture primarily represented by the lawyers’ guild and the Supreme Court. There was the strong background of Christianity and Classical culture that was so signally fading out, if not missing, in the methodological debates in which I had grown up as a student. … The immediate effect was that upon my return to Europe certain phenomena that were of the greatest importance in the intellectual and ideological context of Central Europe, for instance the work of Martin Heidegger, whose famous Sein und Zeit I read in 1928 no longer had any effect on me. It just ran off, because I had been immunized against this whole context of philosophizing through my time in America and especially in Wisconsin.”
What used to be called American common sense philosophy “immunized” Voegelin and the US from the intellectual contagion of anti-Western and anti-rational 20th century continental philosophy. Voegelin was astute to connect this protective force with Christianity and classical philosophy. The idea of common sense is related to natural law, which was strong in the Christian West and in classical times. There are a variety of different overlapping interpretations of natural law, and what might seem “natural” to one society might not to another. For that reason, to our postmodern age the idea of natural law, natural rights, and common sense is outmoded, misunderstood and even embarrassing. But I see this as a critical philosophical and legal concept that has been lost and which I hope will someday be restored.
There are also various definitions of natural law, which can be confusing, and the topic has come up a time or two in political discussions over the last two or three decades, probably adding to the confusion. For example, natural law has been proposed as a theoretical framework for conservative Supreme Court judicial activism. That’s not what I am talking about here. In this post I will take us back to the natural law philosophy of John Locke, whose ideas were most influential in the founding of America and the modern West, and who had the best framing of natural law in my view.
Natural law presupposes that there is a purpose in man’s existence on earth. Given a purpose or teleology, it makes sense that there exist some ways of life or ways of organizing society that would tend toward this natural purpose and that some ways of life would not be conducive to man achieving his purpose or fulfilling his potential. The best way for the individual to live and for the society to be organized that will tend toward the best outcomes for man as measured against his purpose can be called the natural law.
Natural law is intertwined with rationalism, which is why it was more strongly developed in the classical period and the West. For Locke,
“Reason does not so much establish and pronounce this law of nature as search for it and discover it as a law enacted by a superior power.”
The natural law is something objective, from God, and we seek rationally to understand it and apply it in our lives as individuals, and in society as citizens. Natural law is not something that we innately know in its entirety. Reason and revelation help us understand it, but we must also understand the limitations in our ability to know the natural law. In his Essays on Natural Law he laid out clearly what he meant by reason. For Locke, if our thought is based on true foundational principles, and we reason from these true principles, we will come to a more complete (though still imperfect) understanding of the natural law.
“By reason, however, I do not think is meant here that faculty of the understanding which forms trains of thought and deduces proofs, but certain definite principles of action from which spring all virtues and whatever is necessary for the proper moulding of morals. For that which is correctly derived from these principles is justly said to be in accordance with right reason.”
John Locke believed that Christian revelation brought us closest to the natural law, and philosophy or reason alone never could give us as complete a natural law. In The Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke writes:
“It is too hard a task for unassisted reason to establish morality in all its parts, upon its true foundation, with a clear and convincing light. … We see how unsuccessful in this the attempts of philosophers were before our Saviour’s time. How short their several systems came of the perfection of a true and complete morality, is very visible. And if, since that, the Christian philosophers have much out-done them: yet we may observe, that the first knowledge of the truths they have added, is owing to revelation. … It is plain, in fact, that human reason unassisted failed men in its great and proper business of morality. It never from unquestionable principles, by clear deductions, made out an entire body of the ‘law of nature.’ And he that shall collect all the moral rules of the philosophers, and compare them with those contained in the New Testament, will find them to come short of the morality delivered by our Saviour, and taught by his apostles; a college made up, for the most part, of ignorant, but inspired fishermen.”
One doesn’t have to be a believer in the supernatural elements of Christian religion to appreciate the social benefits of Christian natural law. As Locke argued, all the guiding principles of Christian natural law are also in accordance with reason. The principles of a Christian natural law are what we can observe to be the principles that are conducive to a healthy society. We can fairly say that the Christian natural law did in fact create the most culturally and technologically advanced, most prosperous, and most grounded in rational common sense society that there ever was, Western civilization — and more particularly, the United States.
Link to part two
