Static Natural Law

A debate on natural law is brewing in my little world, and here’s a little contribution.

Natural law advocates insist that there are things that We Can’t Not Know, as J.Budziszewski puts it. Paul agrees: “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood by what has been made. . . . they knew God” (Romans 1:20). Not only do all people know God, but “they know the ordinance of God” and the fact that they will have to pass inspection before Him (1:32).

Still, we need to ask, Who is the “we” who can’t not know God and His requirements? Paul says everyone, but then he goes on to describe a process of darkening and increasing moral confusion – from idolatry, worshiping the creature rather than the Creator; to sexual confusion, lusting after the same sex rather than opposite; to general moral decay, described in excruciating detail at the end of Romans 1. Paul says that people know God, but that they “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (1:18). Even if every “we” knows certain things, even if there are things we can’t not know, “we” differ in how we act on them; at some points in history “we” are more in the light than in others; in some times and places “we” act on the knowledge we have and at other times and places “we” don’t.

A friend asked me whether revelation is like a light shining in a pitch dark cave, or more like a light that illuminates a landscape that is already half-discerned. The answer is, it depends. And the very question exposes a weakness of some natural law theory: It assumes that knowledge of God and His requirements is a static sum, whereas Paul teaches that “what we can’t not know” ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes.