Truth is everywhere

Sometimes it seems that only Christians ever appeal to natural law as the basis for government policy. This makes it appear that what we call “natural law” is really a form of religious dogma disguised as public argument. To many contemporary secularists, anything religious must be relegated to the realm of private opinion and the purely subjective. For this reason, basing public policy on such beliefs is claimed to be nothing more than individuals imposing their personal moral beliefs on others.

But, as C. S. Lewis pointed out in his book, The Abolition of Man, the natural moral law is the common property of all humanity and has been recognized across many different cultures, not just Western culture. To emphasize this point, he refers to it as “the Tao.” By “the Tao” he is referring to the natural order of the world, a concept found in various Asian religions.

But, he says, this natural law or order is not essentially different from Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, and Christian concepts. The Jewish concept of law is of an order that is embedded in creation and commanded by God. The prohibition of murder in the Ten Commandments, for example, is a reiteration of the natural law against murder known already by all humanity prior to the giving of the Mosaic Law.

A recent story about “same-sex marriage” highlights the fact that non-Western and non-Christian cultures recognize the reality of “the Tao.” The judge ruled that Japan’s ban of “same-sex marriage” does not violate the constitution and said:

“marriage for heterosexual couples is a system established by society to protect a relationship between men and women who bear and raise children.”

It is noteworthy that the judge defined marriage in terms of husband, wife, and children as a matter of fact. Why? Was that just one person’s opinion? Was it an outdated superstition? Was it just the expression of a feeling?

No, the concept of natural law, in this case the definition of natural marriage, is an objective, observable fact. But if so, why doesn’t everyone see it? Why is it so controversial?

In The Abolition of Man, Lewis explained that this question has been asked and answered for as long as the natural law tradition has existed. People have been questioning the existence of natural law all through history. Augustine defines virtue, says Lewis, as “ordo amoris,” which means “ordered love” or loving all these in just the degree to which they deserve to be love. One can love one’s dog, but if one loves his dog more than his children, we call him a bad father. All loves have a rightful place in the hierarchy of value.

Lewis’s book is about education and was originally a series of lectures to educators. He appeals to Aristotle on education, who says that “the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.” We train our children to love the good by teaching them to see the natural law.

In Plato’s The Republic much of the education prescribed for the future rulers of his city consisted of mathematics. Why math? Math deals with universals—math facts—and it trains the mind to understand not only that objective reality exists but also to defer to reality. It teaches humility before the truth.

Math involves coming to “see” the truth. When a teacher explains how a problem is solved, the student comes to see the truth of the answer. In teaching a young child simple addition, you could say “2 + 3 = 5.” But if the child is puzzled, you can bring out apples and put 2 over here and 3 more over there. Having asked the child how many in each group, you bring the two groups together and ask the child to count them. At this moment the lightbulb comes on and the child comes to “see” the truth of that math fact. In the same way, elements of the natural law do need to be learned by wisdom. That’s what the entire book of Proverbs intuits.

The child now has knowledge. The child knows that “2 +3 = 5” not on the authority of a teacher, but because the child sees the truth directly.

We know the natural law by seeing it, observing it, and learning to live by the grain of it, not against it.

Not everyone sees it because some refuse wisdom. Sin’s impact on reason means the human nature is conditioned to reject order, which is why divine revelation is so important. Others are in outright rebellion against the natural law by suppressing their innate knowledge of it. The key contribution of Christianity to this topic is not that natural marriage consists of a man and woman raising children together as the basis of the family and the society. That fact is not unique to Christianity. What Christianity explains is why not everybody sees this truth.

Natural law is not acknowledged as Paul explains in Romans 1, because of the sin by which fallen humans refuse to recognize and worship God as God. But the problem is not the natural law, but the sinful human. Christians live by the written Word of God, but all human beings are fully accountable to the law of God revealed in nature.