Who defines what constitutes "Natural law"? Society? Philosophers? Judges? What if that group changes their mind? I mean this whole thread is based on a definition made by someone. From whence comes it? What is the end game? If the scriptures are not the basis for Life, then what does it matter any scenario?
My Case For Natural Law
To understand “Natural Law” is to understand “what should justly be the law;” for we should be able to agree in the Christian faith, that “Natural Law” is that “delegated just-environment” from God before mankind establishes “civil law.” Thus in order for civil law to be just, it must by our Christian standards reflect “God's delegation of justice.”
Remember that Natural Law is about “justice” not righteousness, even though justice has a moral precedent. Therefore to understand Natural Law is not to understand “righteousness” but instead simply “justice;” for “Righteousness is to obtain the mind of Christ in all things” and “Justice is reactive action to despotism .” Despotism is violence to person and property, and all violence is not of God.
Since the death and resurrection of our Savior, a dichotomy has existed between “Theological Voluntarism (divine command)” and “(Intellectualism by Reason).” The stoic philosophers prior to Christ established what is called “right-reason (or intellectualism)” to delineate what is “Natural Law” or the “Law of Nature.” This of course was in conflict with OT divine command or “Voluntarism” where the Ten Commandments via Mosaic Law “was a compulsory and legal contract with Israel.”
Yet then came Christ and Paul who would establish “non-legalistic voluntarism” which would cause us to “write the law upon our hearts. ()” Paul spent almost half his efforts in the NT explaining the application of our “New contract or covenant.” Yet the great question rages, then is there to be any law in society and “what laws in society can be just?” Thus we have a commission to know what is “just-law in society.” If we support despotism, we annihilate our own church to destruction: for we have a duty to “support just-law” for our survival to spread the gospel is mandated.
Though I am a protestant Christian, I am highly indebted to the Catholic church for being incredible contributors to the development of Natural Law, thus catholic and protestant contributors are mentioned. St Thomas Aquinas in the legacy of Aristotle would advocate that “right-reason” in each person has the ability to determine in their conscience certain moral norms regarding Natural Law, though some in the Catholic church would argue that “proper legal justice and God's justice” should be the same and then orchestrated by divine command, many others were opposed. Though inside the Catholic church there were divisions regarding “the Aquinas legacy of right reason” and many off-chutes of constructed “divine command,” there also were many historic events that would shape the understanding of Natural Law overall. The Reformation, Protestantism, Absolutism, the decline of Absolutism, the Dutch Rebellion, the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, the enlightenment, the industrial revolution and the American Revolution, all contributed to endless exchanges regarding “what is Natural Law?” After all “how is the law supposed to materialize in society “justly?”
Today we have secular ethicists like Murray Rothbard and many in the faith as well that will endorse the stoics and the Thomistic tradition of “right reason” to ascertain and develop what is “Just-Natural Law,” an ethical apparatus of “justice” obtained by reason; a position that “all aggress is immoral.”
However it was the Puritan “John Locke” on the back of the Glorious Revolution in Britain that constructed a thesis for a revised kind of “divine voluntarism” but with an incredible difference to support the same just-position. His version of divine command theory was focused on “justice instead of righteousness;” for his focus was on life, liberty and property. Thus he would arrive at the same place that reason-based “intellectual Thomistic natural law” can arrive to, but used a deontological code from scripture to do it. Thus if Rothbard and Thomistic Christians arrive at “Just-Natural Law” by reason, and those in the Christian Lockean tradition arrive at “Just-Natural Law” by scripture, then technically they are both from two sides in one accord, yet their derivations are different.
In the same way that Locke was able to arrive at life, liberty and property by Gods delegation to Adam in scripture that three precedents were in place (life, liberty and property), I am also there in this Lockean position, but with furthering fortification to examine contracts from heaven. For I will contend that from scripture that life, liberty and property were indeed present, but I will also contend that “covenants” will drive the delegation of Natural Rights; for I contend that “God contracts with mankind.”
For the old voluntarism of Mosaic Law would usher in divine command theory to force us righteous by ruthless men, causing every kind of wretched theocracy, and dictatorship. Paul would in more ways than can be counted in the New Testament condemned this kind of arbitrary law, though he would also admonish for submission in the process when possible. Christ also would condemn the compulsion of arbitrary law, and stand up publicly against it; for He was murdered upon a cross for standing up against it. Yet Christ did not contest “just law (lawful reaction to the trespass (aggress) against life, liberty and property).” Christ stood against “arbitrary unjust law.”
For Locke is good to denote an ethical deontological substrate of justice from scripture but could have in my opinion fortified his position by becoming rigid in his applications, also realizing that intellectualism can resolve the same substrate, and by fortification regarding this contract in Genesis to the human race.
Genesis
1. And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.
2. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.
3. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.
4. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.
5. And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man.
6. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.
7. And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.
8. And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,
9. And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;
10. And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.
11. And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.
12. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:
13. I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.
14. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:
15. And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
16. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.
17. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.
It is by this “unilateral contract” or “delegation” from God that we are established from scripture our primordial Natural Rights. For we are not allowed to kill, or harm, and the earth and all that is in it is given to us to possess. In Genesis this is also reflected but also with extraordinary emphasis regarding “sovereignty” or “total dominion and authority.”
Thus we cannot kill anybody
Thus we cannot harm anybody
Thus we may own the earth and everything in it.
* Thus we may not eat the “live-blood” of a “living” animal. - This is a case for animal cruelty or the treatment of blood regarding a live animal. This is highly debated and was even debated in the New Testament.
Therefore Natural Law is that apparatus of “justice” where we are to be “non-violent” to each other regarding person and property. God is the only “rightful” interventionist as the “highest property authority.” Thus Israel under the Mosaic Contract was able to be commanded unto violence to kill but they/Israel (the people) on their own volition without God were not able to harm a hair on another persons head. Thanks to Christ our new covenant removes the Mosaic Covenant of compulsion and replaced it with a better voluntary contract/covenant of grace, where now the law unto righteousness is written upon our hearts, save “just-law” which is not only written upon our hearts but can also “ethically be enforced in society. For Christ and Paul did denounce the compulsion of “arbitrary law unto righteousness saying it is dead” but never denounced “just-law” from Gods unilateral rainbow covenant of justice.
Natural Rights – Thus by the Unilateral Rainbow Covenant, our Natural Rights are formed by two restraints and one offering. A restraint to kill, a restraint to harm, and an offering of property. However some say, “Yes but since God gave property to “all people” thus would that not indicate that the world is ours as “common property?” I will say no, because of a myriad of contexts all through scripture where God allocated property to the “individual.” However all property according to scripture “must be honest” which means its void of corruption, deceit and theft.
Let us realize also that today “Natural Rights” are typically not the same thing as “Human Rights using todays terminology.” For Natural Rights are “embodied in us from conception” in a construct known as “Natural Law” which as Christians we can all agree derives from God's Rainbow Unilateral Covenant.
“Human Rights Terminology” on the other hand are typically embedded into human-law by powers that be, who engineer a “delivery method” by means of “a legal construct” that will by rule of law, positive law, or legislation determine what society is allowed to do or what they cannot do in order to protect certain “rights.” Human rights “may” or “may not” reflect “Natural Rights.” Typically the key difference in Natural Rights and Human Rights is “derivation.”
Example: Freedom of Speech is a “Natural Right” yet a “Right of College Education” is often in the confines of Socialism, fought for as a “human right.” The best way to differentiate the two, is that Natural Rights are embodied at birth; no government or human institution gave them to you, and “ethically” no human institution or government can take them away. Yet a government may “deliver” free college by means of legal plunder to redistribute whats taken from some people and give that to other people as a proposed “legal right,” which is unjust law because it requires “violence to property.”
Thus we are not “born with freedom of free college,” though we are born with the natural right of “liberty” to pursue college unabated. What makes the U.S. constitution unique is that “to a degree” it gives credence to “Natural Rights” or what is referred to as “unalienable rights.” Many constitutions around the world have “human rights in them” but few have “Natural Rights protected with “restraint to government.”
