Introduction
Is the Christian conception of Natural Law indispensable to a coherent moral theory of the State? The Christian vision of natural law is indispensable to a coherent moral theory of State because it gives the best understanding of universal moral objectivism embedded in all men, has a consistent outcome and equilibrium for religious and non-religious peoples governed through the common denominator of human reason for judging whether a civil law is good or bad (morally) in comparison with the eternal universal law intrinsically known to all men by conscience or (nature), and brings the maximum amount of harmony between the two, God ordained, institutions of Church and State, with each seeking to understand their role better while facilitating the eudemonia of humans through the checks and balances of the government due to the potential corruption of power and because of the inherent sin nature of its actors with the consent of the governed and the free will and free love of man under God as the means to balance the scale of a just moral state system.
Universal Moral Objectivism: Natural Law
The definition of the Natural Law, according to Dr. Chupp in Lecture One of this class, is: “Although there are many ways of defining natural law, perhaps the simplest is to characterize it as a believed that there exists in the nature of human existence, some standard of ethical conduct that can be known by all human beings endowed with reason without any special revelation from a supernatural source.” (Chupp, 2023) Natural Law and its definition have developed through the centuries and beginning with who some consider the originator of the natural law: the Stoics. As John Lawrence Hill documents in his writings in After the Natural Law, “The Christian concept of the imago Dei, that our nature is itself a mark of the divine imprint on human nature, has its precursor in Stoic thought.” (Hill, 2016, 627 of 5610) Although Scriptures were already penned containing Genesis 1:26-27 imago Dei, it was not until later in church history that the meaning and weight of these verses came to full bear on the philosopher’s ears.
God has made man in his image and after His likeness. Humankind deviated from following God, and God flooded the whole earth. After the flood: God made a covenant with mankind that would perpetuate to all generations. God gave mankind direction regarding the restrictions that He placed on Himself and the comprehensive judgment of the world. He also gave Noah and all mankind a direct order not to shed the blood of mankind in a murderous fashion because mankind is made in the image of God and has inherited value just because God said that he does. (Fischer) (Genesis 9:6) Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made the man. (King James, 1769) In a broad sense, God revealed the nature of justice by establishing with authority strictly what laws govern mankind. While Stoics may have invented the term “natural law,” they did not understand the full implications of the concept. The Stoics did not have the full teleological view of a God-ordered eternal law embedded in every man's heart to that exist to conform things back to His eternal lawful order. Instead, the Stoics devised a philosophy that the ends justify the means. As Budziszewski's book A Line Through the Heart of Man distinguishes, “Without confidence in providence, our vision of every commandment goes askew. “Thou shalt not murder” seems to change before our eyes to “Thou shalt keep alive the greatest number possible—at the expense of others if that is what it takes.” (Budziszewski, 2009, 886 of 5430) This moral theory of natural law is not cohesive to the morals of an internal intrinsic justice system embedded in the nature of every man to be ordered by his Creator and after his character. It is moral subjectivism and not objectivism. Therefore, history needed to continue to develop this idea for a coherent definition and theory.
Natural Law for Plato and Aristotle took the form of the “Mind of God” that was out there and not internal to man. So, the rational interpretation is, in Plato’s view at best, a shadow or, in Aristotle's opinion, a shot in the directive dark. At least Aristotle had a better understanding than Plato that there was something moral implanted in man. A Jowett notes, “political instinct is implanted in all men by nature.” (Jowett, 1885, p. 12) Aristotle might have been discovered a form or need for justice but did he not understand it as a natural law.
Cicero's writings mainly dealt with the “justice of an Empire”, though comprised of individual citizens. (Peabody, 1887) So, what is justice by nature for Cicero? Hawley concludes, Not only to be observed among the powerful, "justice must be maintained even towards the lowliest ... even to slaves." (Hawley, 2018) Cicero was interested in the justification of doing right based on the past and spent much time defending Rome's acquisition of their empire.
Augustine made a go of understanding natural law during the early Christian period and wound up with a very comprehensive view through a somewhat “Christianized” lens. The Stoics believed in determinism due to personality and passed over the idea of free will. At the same time, Augustine’s much more Christianized version of Natural Law led him to think that the hardware in man’s heart gave him a sense of intrinsic justice and that the valid eternal law can be actualized by reason and a clear view of the God of nature. As Chroust so perfectly lays the words of Augustine, “Justice is "but a habit of the soul which imparts to everyone the dignity due to him, yet always concerning the common good. Its origin proceeds from nature.” (Chroust, 1944, p. 198) Augustine inched to an objective, coherent theory of State. Hill writes, “St. Augustine, who was deeply influenced by Plato’s idea of Being, recognized that God was not a spirit existing independently of the world. Rather, God must, in some sense, be “in” all things.10 Augustine wrote that God is “intimior intimo meo” (“closer to me than I am to myself”).” (Hill, 2016, pg. 741) In Augustine’s work, the City of God, he would conclude that all that worked to advance the gospel and support the government institutions for that cause worked towards the City of God, and those who did not work and were representative of the City of Man. “The City of God is theology framed in the history of humanity and explaining the action of God in the world.” (Augustine & Hitchcock, 1931, 1252 of 29230)
It would not be until Aquinas that there would be a more objective, morally cohesive Christianized version of the interpretation of natural law. As Dr. Chupp summarizes, “In Aquinas's commentary on Aristotle's Politics, he provided a Christian update of the purpose of politics, which he agreed with Aristotle is the greatest of human sciences.” (Dr. Chupp, 2021)
“Aquinas believed that the natural law was appointed by reason and that the truths were known to all men but that the reason for knowing the self-evident truths was not understood equally by all due to reason's unequalness.” (Aquinas, b) Aquinas believed that all could naturally know the morally good ethic, both the saved and the unregenerate. This Christian update may have flowed from an understanding of the book of Romans that declares that God manifests his knowledge in mankind. (Romans 1:19-20) “19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:” (King James, 1769) There is a view that the Apostle Paul laid out to the church at Rome that was borne out through the Christological teachings, that those who have never heard the truth of the gospel will still be accountable to God because they have a knowledge of God and his order internally available put there for the use of creating a just law system and an ordered society. They have an external observation of who God is and what He has done with the world in bringing order as a pattern. The natural law is good for governance and guides one to God. If there is a moral law, there must be a Moral Lawgiver. This would then create a cue the church and gospel preachers to persuade mankind in his conscience and with his consent, to follow God in His Kingdom while learning to love Him. Paul writes in Romans and goes on to say that man uses and misuses this intrinsic sense of justice, but it is there to guide equally to all men. (Romans 2:14-15) 14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: 15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) Aquinas distinguished universal moral objectivism through the Christian interpretation of natural law.
As Dr. Chupp stated in his lecture on John Calvin, “John Calvin maintains the Christian idea of the two swords, that religious and political offices should be separated. But importantly, for our investigation, Calvin was among the first to explicitly place doctrine and political authority under the power of popular approval.” (Chupp, 2023) Calvin’s turn to widespread approval led the way to the twisting of the natural law to a distorted social contract theory, which once again paved the way to moral subjectivism.
Luther, Hooker, and Aquinas all believed that God used human reason to discover God’s divine law and that human reason could rule mankind reasonably. Hooker argues that the law of nature by the golden rule is too simplistic of law to rule in human laws like the Puritans believed. (Luther, 2021) Hooker thought there were “three sets of laws: Celestial laws that ruled the angelic beings, natural laws that ruled nature and its providence by force and human laws that were the result of human government which was the product of natural law.” (Hooker, 1887) All three had similar beliefs about natural law though it may be indirectly. Hooker taught that political society is a natural, good outworking of a God-ordered universe (Hooker, 1887). As the governed and the government, we must agree together to rule in such a way that ultimately brings God glory and mankind his greatest good conformed to the eternal beatific vision of God.
Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau each were responsible for tainting the classical worldview of natural law and changing the meaning of rules for the “greater good” to change the meaning of “ruled for the best-reasoned outcome” moment in history. As Budziszewski suggests, "As my choice of words suggests, most natural law thinkers have also maintained that the authority of the natural law is rooted in the good of the created order, which is rooted, in turn, in the uncreated goodness of God." (Budziszewski, 2009) This change malaigned to utilitarianism throughout the Enlightenment period in history. Another critical change during this time was that religion would be now relegated to the private realm and thus paving the way for the secular State ruled by positivism. Hill explains the moral difference in the system of utilitarianism definition of ruling for the good of the people and the teleological natural law system ruling for the good of the people (back to the Good or eternal order in which they were designed to flow to)
Thus, an act may be morally required even if it does not produce some specific consequences—happiness (as with utilitarian consequentialism) or human flourishing (as with teleological ethics). De-ontology is a duty-based ethic (deon means “duty”) that views certain actions as morally obligatory or morally objectionable, independently of the consequences they produce. Thus, it is sometimes said that teleological and consequentialist systems make what is “right” derivative of what is good, while deontological systems make what is good derivative of the more fundamental rightness of an action. (Hill, 2016, 4375 of 4380)
John Rawl's work on the theory of justice is also a teleologic, morally relativistic ethic in that he advocated for distributive justice. Equality of outcome is not the same as equality of opportunity. “Nozick objects, first, to the fact that Rawlsian judgments of justice are oriented in a consequentialist manner to distributional profiles. He finds two problems with this: To institute any distributional profile, one must override existing property rights. And, even after such a thoroughgoing intervention, further redistributive interventions will be needed to preserve the desired distributional.” (Pogge, 2007) Rawls misses the mark by creating a subjective moral law through a social contract and subjectivizing the natural law as two or more individuals living in a natural world that agree on what is morally right or wrong at the time. If truth is relative, then people in different time zones intersecting in social geography or various cultures from different eras on earth would have contradicting versions of a “truth.” This is morally incoherent because things that are different are not the same. The second law of logic (the law of non-contradiction) guides us into coherency when understanding the verifiability of truth claims.
The Rawls social contract system viewed man as made up of material only. There is a severe problem with the material view of man, “I am the same person I was when I was a child, even though not a single molecule in my body is the same from that time to now.” (Hill, 2016, 1248 of 1249) There is an internal conflict of morals with this view because man is not the same material that he once was, so who do we make the social contracts with a view to moral ethics of good and evil?
This type of positive law theory began to replace natural law for governing. It could now pervert justice as long as it served the greater good or utilitarian good of society and is now based on what is right or wrong. “As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was drawn to materialism and utilitarianism, once ominously wrote: If I were having a philosophical argument with a man I was going to have hanged (or electrocuted), I should say, I don’t doubt that your act was inevitable for you but to make it more avoidable by others we propose to sacrifice you to the common good. If you like, you may regard yourself as a soldier dying for your country. But the law must keep its promises.” (Hill, 2016, 1217) Positive law had a foundation that cannot seek justice based on the fact of the accused, only the utilitarian, morally relativistic view of positive law.
Universal Participation in Government Though Intrinsic Justice by Natural Law
The great thing about Aquinas’ theory of natural law is that the Christianized view of natural law encompasses the maximum number of free peoples that can participate in governing. Since all are free to be elected to govern for the good of all, then the consent of the governed falls to the responsibility of the whole, thereby making all equal in opportunity. The religious and non-religious man can rule because God creates all with an internal sense of justice that is a common denominator to fulfill the State’s minimum role of punishing the evil doers and rewarding the good. The inner meaning of “Good” is based on the natural law, as already explained. As Dr. Fischer notes,
“Happily, a covenantal perspective encompasses the best of each of these approaches while at the same time minimizing the weaknesses of each. For instance, a covenant is designed to incorporate a sense of justice and care for all of the members as a whole. This speaks to the concerns of both the justice and the utilitarian approach. But since it also emphasizes the importance of each member’s rights, it affirms the Rights approach. Mutual accountability and hesed mandate that every member care for and is accountable to every other member. This combination addresses the weaknesses mentioned above in three ways: 1) it ensures that no one is overlooked despite what the majority may want (a weakness of the Utilitarian approach), 2) it changes the decision-making process from one that is adversarial and competitive (a weakness of the Rights approach) to one that is based upon mutual care; and 3) links personal self-interest with caring for others, thereby removing the sense of entitlement that can exist with the Justice approach” (Kahlib & Fischer, 2010)
A Christian and consistent approach to governance is with the natural rights of individuals protected as inalienable and God-given. This democratic approach to involving the whole while preserving the rights of people is not about a mob rule of giving in to the loudest crowd that shouts about their perceived “lust” or wants to be relabeled as supposed rights: Ruling from the inalienable, not the insatiable. A Christian Statesman will maximize the number of people ruling. Foster and Swanson noted the foundations of an American Christianized Moral Law foundational start in a covenantal agreement,
Because of these “discontented and mutinous speeches,” the Pilgrim leaders, Deacon Carver, Elder Brewster, and the young William Bradford, realized that their civil government would have to be placed on a firm Christian base before leaving the ship, or a state of anarchy would ensue. The Pilgrims accomplished this in their vitally important document, the Mayflower Compact. In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, & Ireland king, defender of the faith, &c., having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of our king & country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly & mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant & combine ourselves into a civil body politic, for our better ordering & preservation & furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just & equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions & offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet & convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.11 This was to be the first of many such covenants, agreements, and constitutions written by each colony. These various covenants form one of the pillars of American constitutional government. (Foster & Swanson, 1992, p. 139)
This pilgrim separatist solution involved the covenant's religious and non-religious people. As a second wave of Puritans came over to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in America, the City on a Hill was in full effect. Eventually, it overtook the policymakers of their time to limit those who could hold office to religious people, specifically church members. The Puritan Church-State of England clawed its way back towards the wandering Pilgrims. As opposed to previous times of unjust laws persecuting the citizens from the Old World, there was plenty of room to spread out in the New World. And spread out is precisely what many wanted to find the laws in the new land of America by popular sovereignty. The new world believed the era of the “right of kings” had opposed the people for too long, and they then wanted to try this latest experiment. Founded as the nation of Israel before God, so reluctantly gave them a King and warned them of the “rights of kings” doctrine that was so famous for too long. As Marshall puts it, “God’s work in liberating us from 2,700 years of domination, under the totalitarian rule of the “divine right of kings”? From the time of Samuel, the prophet in 1120 B.C. until the founding of our nation, the pagan idea of man and government dominated the world scene.” (Foster & Swanson, 1992, p. 28)
It was Cicero who voiced his fear of the over-concentration of power. Dr. Chupp notes, “A transition from an ancient tribal past where kings to a large republic were sophisticated political institutions such as the assembly and sent this republic rapidly expanding due to its military discipline and prowess. But this expansion brought decadence and corruption to Rome, as Cicero believed was threatening its republican institutions. Specifically, he feared that Rome would seek to answer these problems by an over-concentration of our executives.” (Chupp, 2023) As Peabody notes, the Roman Senate was a Harbor for Kings and Rules. (Peabody, 1887) Rome seemed destined to have its Emperor at the expense of the rights of the civic body to rule. It is precisely this Leviathan of Crises that Thomas Hobbes would vi for again years later: a trade of safety in crisis for the rights of the people to be ruled. Governments seek to do the same even today through the recent medical marshal law of Covid. Robert Higgs notes that governments rarely shrink their size or cease all their emergency powers once granted. They usually have to be taken back. (Higgs, 1987)
Martin Luther thought a Christian King could be a viable choice if he ruled well. Still, he did not have the advantage of understanding fully the maximization principle of participation in the government through the lens of the American experiment. Martin Luther and Richard Hooker had different ideas than Thomas Aquinas had about Christian Kingship. How should a Christian King rule subjects? Aquinas held to a view that Pope was the height of temporal powers and that it was the greatest honor for a King to be Christian and rule in a way that brings the greatest good to all because he himself knows God, and God is the greatest good. (Rhonheimer, 2019) One potential problem for Luther is that the Pope was the head of the church and spoke as if God himself were speaking in precept. The Pope could not honestly delineate his sword power as head of State. (Luther, 2021) while using the mode of the persuasion of the conscience as a primary means of ruling God’s Kingdom of Heaven. Both Luther, Hooker and Aquinas believed that a Christian King was a possibility and a good choice for a just government. (Chroust, 1944)
A Christian covenantal statesman approach seeks to rule for the greater telos “Good” of the people while maximizing participation of equal opportunity to participate in the civic statehood responsibilities under God.
A Balanced Church and State Role and a Check of Power of the State within State
There is a distinguishment of the Church and the State that needs to be clarified lest the government find the need to persuade the conscience while tossing out the God-given autonomy of people through means of the statically placed sword in their hand given by God for the punishment of the evildoers but not for manipulation. The role of the government is described by God in the Bible and yet understood by man as he has the natural law embedded within that understands justice. The role of the State is to realize the role of justice while setting up moral boundaries by enforcement of immoral actions against each other and their nature. With a moral law in view by man's governance, the Moral Law Giver is in reach for the church to point to as the source of reckoning and reconciling by Jesus: The Just and the Justifier. (Romans 3:26) 26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
The role of the government is outlined in Romans. (Romans 13:1-5) 1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. 2 Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: 4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. 5 Wherefore ye must be subject, not only for wrath but also for conscience sake. There is a need for the Church to do its job by giving the gospel and it will make the State's job all that much easier as a person is set free from their sins and learns the temperance of the Holy Spirit. This self-control can eliminate many man hours and legislative session minutes when Nations consist of citizens that rule themselves morally and are a shining example to the body politic as to what we can base our governmental law’s outcomes towards. As Fischer notes, “Based on the signs of moral decay in today's society, it appears that Americans tend to view the individual as absolutely sovereign, and that therefore there are no "absolute morals" by which to live, much less an absolute government. But the problem with this belief in the absolute sovereignty of the individual is that it can lead to anarchy and the disintegration of society. Furthermore, if anarchy occurs, then it is very likely that tyranny will occur, because if a person is not capable of ruling himself, then someone else will rule for him. That is why "the greatest problem facing American government today" is not the threat of war from abroad, or the danger of economic instability from within, but the moral decay of America's people: a people who apparently "believe that there is no such thing as absolute truth," and therefore feel no reason to be bound by the Word of God.” (Fischer, p.9)
But since man is inherently sinful and generally devolves towards sin, there is a need to set up the government power structure with checks and balances. As David Barton puts it in his American Story book, “Based on the principle outlined in Jeremiah 17:9—the verse specifically cited by Adams—the Founders separated the functions of the branches from each other, providing internal checks and balances to limit corrupt officials. Thus, if a federal judge becomes corrupt, he or she can be removed from office by Congress. If corrupt members of Congress pass an unjust bill, the president can veto it. And so on. (Barton & Barton, 2020, p. 359)
A government of checks and balances allows for the moral adhesion to just laws crafted by the creative imagination of the many and not just the interest of a view by keeping the maximum amount of people engaged in judging statutes and involved in governance. Indeed, the realization that the natural law is an embedded recognition of what a just law looks like as it composites towards the created order and flows from the attribute of the good by God. While man was created in the image of God and had an intrinsic value assigned by God, he fell in the Garden of Eden and needs redemption and reconciliation back to God. (Romans 5:12) Wherefore, as by one person sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: Churches exist to bring the fallen back to God in a restored image of God from a marred by sin image of God, through the preaching of Jesus Christ. There is the potential for man to imagine any ideology taking the place of God. As David T. Koyzis summarizes it in Political Visions & Illusions, the ideologies of mankind turn idolatrous anytime mankind lifts the “ideology above that which God intended.” (Koyzis & Mouw, 2019, p.2) Mankind can take an ideology and lift it above God. Koyzis goes on to explain how maladaptive ideologies can ruin political governing.
Ideology threatens not only politics but also the ordinary aims of life itself, as it did in his native Czechoslovakia from 1948 until the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. “Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world.”14 In what he labels the “post-totalitarian” societies of the former Soviet bloc, ideology claims to offer people a sense of identity and dignity while in reality stripping them of it. “It is a world of appearances trying to pass for reality.”15 It constructs a world that assimilates all people into a self-contained alternative pseudo-reality in which slavery passes for liberty, censorship for free expression, bureaucracy for democracy, and arbitrary power for legal authority. Under such a regime people are compelled to “live within a lie” in which they are made to deny the real aims of life, with all its humanity and unpredictability. In Havel we find ideology realizing its darkest potential. (Koyzis & Mouw, 2019, p. 7)
There is a real need for the church to take its rightful place in society for the good of the people and the guidance of the State. The secular State has tried and failed to rule without God but has left everything that is virtuously good for the governance of the people and even distorted it by replacing it with short sited temporary capitulations to the constituency by even legalizing gay marriage.
Three Public Policy Applications
The formation of public policy today should be to and from Good and for the good of human flourishing. Gay marriage is one issue that has recently been legalized in the United States of America that is not either good or for the good of human flourishing of the people. It is not good in that it is not defined as morally right toward the teleological good flowing from the eternal attribute of God’s goodness. (Genesis 1:27) So God created man in his image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. It is not ordered according to the created order of God. It is indeed a perversion. (Roman 1:27) And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. Obergefell v. Hodges was the Supreme Court ruling in the United States of America that made it legal for same-sex couples to marry in all fifty states as it interpreted the constitution to describe the guarantee of liberty to marry whomever one wants. But where does that stop? Can Someone marry a horse, a child, or a truck? It is ludicrous as to the line of thinking that constitutional law has allowed. Wild-eyed interpretations of the fourteenth amendment and judicial activism were to blame for capitulating the cultural temper tantrum of the few loud and proud. A Remedy of the reinterpretation of the fourteenth amendment should be able to undo the damage. It would be helpful if congress would enshrine it once and for all in constitutional language that the definition of marriage as the State sees it is between a man and woman as assigned at birth.
Another policy that has left the natural law understanding of good is social justice which provides an unequal distributive justice based on the color of a man’s skin. According to Thomas Sowell, Cosmic Justice is a nebulous term that, when explained, gives a clearer understanding of what some in academia have meant by toying with the word justice. The idea of regular justice or “formal” justice,” where all may play by the same rules to ensure equal opportunity, is substituted for equity or so-called “fair” justice. “Everyone playing by the same rules or being judged by the same standards is merely “formal” equality, in Professor Rawls’ view, while truly “fair” equality of opportunity means providing everyone with equal prospects of success from equal individual efforts. Note how “fair” has an entirely different meaning in this context. Cosmic justice is not about the rules of the game. It is about putting particular segments of society in the position they would have been in but for some undeserved misfortune” (Sowell, 2002). Cosmic Justice is in the business of righting every misfortune, whether it is the fault of the universe or the responsibility of society’s formative structure provided or even if it is no-fault misfortune or harsh realization of results earned through a crime committed or a mistake made: cosmic justice seeks to make reparations in a collective sense instead of leaving it up to individual justice and less broad approaches than that of a governmental solution. The problem is that no one is God and can know what a sense of fairness is since we have never had an equal universe before. People are born differently and disproportionately and die at varying times from varying methods. We take on too much when we decide to play God without knowing what it would take to make all things equal. A just system is better played out when there is equality of opportunity and countless people helping those that suffer less fortunate circumstances out of their own free will love and not a broad government mandate. Thwarting people's free will to help out the unfortunate (by broad governing reapportionment of segments of society) negates the opportunity for God to be exalted, for helpers to love, and for the genuinely helpless to be loved.
President Joe Biden is the arbiter of cosmic social justice as he systemically has embedded back into the government racism, “Our focus will be on small businesses on Main Street that aren’t wealthy and well-connected that are facing real economic hardships through no fault of their own,” Biden says. “Our priority will be Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American-owned small, women-owned businesses” (Oliver, 2020). All that is just and fair in natural law calls for man to govern better than this.
One final policy that needs to be viewed from the lens of natural law is abortion. It is wrong to take the life of an innocent child. There is never a justification for murdering a child, perhaps removing a child for the saving of the life of the mother, but never murdering. Abortion must be enshrined into federal law via the constitution and the protection of the natural laws of all human life. God views the fruit growing in the womb of a mother as life. (Exodus 21:22-23) 22 If men strive and hurt a woman with child so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,
Conclusion
Is the Christian conception of Natural Law indispensable to a coherent moral theory of the State? The Christian conception of natural law is indispensable to a coherent moral theory of State because it gives the best understanding of universal moral objectivism embedded in all men, has a consistent outcome and equilibrium for religious and non-religious peoples governed through the common denominator of human reason for judging whether a civil law is good or bad (morally) in comparison with the eternal universal law intrinsically known to all men by conscience or (nature), and brings the maximum amount of harmony between the two God-ordained institutions of Church and State with each seeking to understand their role better while facilitating the eudemonia of humans through the checks and balances of the government due to the potential corruption of power and because of the inherent sin nature of its actors with the consent of the governed and the free will and free love of man under God as the means to balance the scale of a just moral state system.
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