In the previous election, the victorious party campaigned on a message of “common sense.” The opposing party used similar language. Political observers can judge whether the program on offer was either common or sense, but the use of this term has become increasingly common in the public square, whether it comes to immigration policy, transgender men in women’s sports, or economic policy. I want to suggest these appeals, whatever the motivation, reflect a call to a broadly and perhaps unconsciously accepted sense of fairness and norms. I doubt any of the political practitioners consider themselves natural lawyers but this cultural moment should cause Christians to consider the usefulness of natural law.
What is natural law? It’s the law of God, embedded in creation and written on the human heart. Andrew Walker, author of Faithful Reason defines natural law this way:
The natural law tradition posits that a God-given, self-evident universal moral order exists that human reason can grasp. The natural law defines and identifies which actions are reasonable and worth pursuing—even apart from an immediate appeal to divine revelation.
The authors of Hopeful Realism define it similarly:
In the Christian intellectual tradition, the natural law has for centuries described a set of stable, morally obliging norms for human action, grounded in a common human nature. The basic idea is that we have a nature oriented to the particular ends that are proper to us as human beings such that we are obliged to pursue those ends and avoid what works against them. If we want to live well as human beings, there are certain things we should do and certain things we should not do. Not only is the moral guidance provided by natural law obligatory for all humans, it is also to some degree accessible to all humans.
Natural law doesn’t say that all aspects of God’s law are available to all people all the time, of course. This is why the qualifier above, “to some degree” matters. Romans 1, perhaps the most articulate defense of natural law in Scripture, concedes that humans often suppress the conscience. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 that even spiritually regenerated Christians “see through a glass darkly,” which is why the phrase “common sense isn’t very common” is often true.
Still, one doesn’t have to look far, even in an increasingly pluralistic society, for examples of unbelievers, even atheists, who nevertheless protest in favor of aspects of God’s law, without acknowledging God. The recent backlash against the transgender revolution and identity politics by skeptics such as Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins are popular examples.
Natural law is experiencing a bit of a renaissance among evangelicals. This is a positive development as natural law can be of use in at least three ways for church’s mission in the contemporary moment.
Natural Law as An Apologetic
In Psalm 19, the Psalmist declares:
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the expanse proclaims the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour out speech;
night after night they communicate knowledge.
There is no speech; there are no words;
their voice is not heard.
Their message has gone out to the whole earth,
and their words to the ends of the world.
There are wonders embedded in creation that, according to the psalmist, point to the transcendent. Creation, “pouring out speech,” is not subtle. Creation provokes a curiosity that, if nurtured, can lead to a pursuit of truth found in God’s revelation of himself in his Word and his Son. The mere complexity of the human cell, the vastness of the universe, and design embedded in the delicate ecosystems that make the earth inhabitable for humans—all of these are signposts that can lead to salvation. Of course this requires both a willingness to find the truth, like the Magi in Matthew’s gospel, and faithfulness on the part of Christians to declare that truth (“How will they hear without a preacher?” Paul asks rhetorically in Romans 10:14).
If creation shouts God’s glory, it also communicates God’s law, both in the way God designed humans to flourish and in the human conscience. This is why Romans 1 proclaims judgement on the human race for rebelling against the norms they know intuitively to be true.
Those norms can be rejected, as they often are, but they can also be embraced and lead to a search for the source. This was the case with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the atheist who recently converted to Christianity. It was the entire worldview of Christianity that began to make sense of her natural intuitions toward human dignity, freedom, and moral restraint. It’s also what motivated Paul Kingsworth to give up his skepticism and embrace Christ:
I grew up believing what all modern people are taught: that freedom meant lack of constraint, but Christianity taught me that this freedom was no freedom at all, but enslavement to the passions: a neat description of the first thirty years of my life. True freedom, it turns out, is to give up your will and follow God’s.
We often think of the Christian sexual ethic, for instance, as an impediment to gospel witness. It often can be to those who wish to live as they please. But it can also be an apologetic. Even when enraptured by grace, it’s the moral law that produces the inner guilt that provokes the quest for God’s mercy.
Natural Law as Political Framework
Natural law can also help us construct a political framework. As America becomes more pluralistic and explicitly Christian arguments in the public square on behalf of creational goods such as marriage and the sanctity of unborn life grow less palatable, natural law arguments can appeal to the secular conscience.
Consider the growing bipartisan consensus on the importance of stable, two-parent family life for children. Catholic sociologist Brad Wilcox’s work, particularly in Get Married, leverages the massive trove of social science data to make his case that traditional marriage is indispensable for the health of American society. He’s not alone in making this case, joined by others, including left-leaning economic professor Melissa Kearney, whose book The Two–Parent Privilege argues similarly, often to the chagrin of her progressive colleagues who wish the data said something differently.
Similar approaches are made on behalf of the unborn, as the window into the womb has made America more aware of the reality of human life at every development. The use of natural law is not to say we shouldn’t strip our public voice of its Christian accent, nor should we be intimidated into confining our beliefs to Sunday mornings. Every political actor brings their gods to the public square, we should not acquiesce to leaving our faith at home.
Still, natural law arguments help us persuade those who don’t share our faith of the necessity and utility of public policy that is creational and natural and good for the “welfare of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7). And natural law can be the basis for a political co-belligerence with unbelievers, a necessity in a democracy.
Beyond policy arguments, natural law also helps us form a realistic framework for politics in a fallen world. There is a standard by which God judges unbelievers, based on the law written in creation and written on the human heart, apart from the revelation of Scripture. Consider his judgment of Cain in Genesis 4 for the premeditated murder of his brother, Abel or the judgment that came to the world through the Flood, or the judgment God brought to Sodom and Gomorrah.
It is clear from the Noahic covenant in Genesis 9 and in Paul’s framework for civil government in Romans 13 and 1 Timothy 2 that governments are tasked by God with a modest and limited framework for rewarding good and punishing evil.
These expectations are different, of course, for God’s “peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9) who are called beyond the baseline behavior of civil society toward a deeper devotion and worship of God through the Son, Jesus Christ. This is, in a sense, what Jesus is getting at in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), where he contrasts the baseline of the moral law (“You have heard it said, ‘Do not murder’…but I tell you, everyone who is angry…will be subject to judgment”).
Natural law helps us Christians approach our political duties in a democracy with a healthy dose of realism, resisting both theocratic utopianism and libertarian cynicism, pushing back against both an aggressive nanny state and libertine social chaos. It helps us triage our policy aims and prioritize those things which are creational goods for all of human flourishing. Understanding natural law helps us properly negotiate the proper spheres of home, church, and state.
Natural Law as An Invitation
Lastly, natural law serves, in a pluralistic society like ours, as an invitation to explore the divine. Having stumbled upon some of God’s truth from creation, many are inquiring more about the source of this reality. Witness the continued explorations of Scripture from influential voices such as Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, and others. Christians have an opportunity to enter these spaces and invite the inquirers into the full revelation of God and a relationship with his son, Jesus Christ. Just as Paul found common ground with the philosophers in Athens, so we might find common ground in the areas where special revelation and general revelation overlap and that have struck a chord in the American consciousness.
We might say to these de-churched, but religiously curious, “Your intuitions are right about transgender ideology, but let me tell you what Christians believe about the goodness of maleness and femaleness and let me tell you about the Designer behind the way the world works.” Natural law reveals and provokes curiosity. But it is only the beginning of a journey toward God. Believing Christians are tasked with connecting these inquiries to God’s revelation of himself in Christ through patient evangelism and discipleship. In a sense natural law and Biblical revelation work in tandem, the former in the air and the latter on the ground. Or, you might say, natural law arguments function as fulfillment of the Great Commandment and evangelistic conversations function as a fulfillment of the Great Commission. Equipped as covenant communities in our weekly gatherings, we are then sent out as natural lawyers into society.
Not every argument will lead our interlocutors to embrace good social policy or interrogate the claims of Scripture. But with faithful witness and the power of the Spirit, many who understand “common sense” will find their way toward Christ.
Daniel Darling is the director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the author of several books including Agents of Grace, The Dignity Revolution, and his forthcoming, In Defense of Christian Patriotism. He is a fellow at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and a columnist for WORLD Magazine.
