Natural Law Lesson

Although the study of law is generally boring to the bone, sometimes, it does open my eyes to see things from an interesting perspective. Jurisprudence is my worst subject in Finals Part 2 because all the legal theories expounded by seemingly intellectual jurists did not make sense to me at all. I thought there was something wrong with me, but when I found out that many jurists ended up in the mental hospital, I knew then that the mental one is not me ;)

Anyway, my revision in the legal theory of natural law showed me something true. I learned a valuable lesson from this school of thought comprising of a number of legal theories, seeking to explain the existence of legal authorities in the society, that are linked by certain common assumptions. One of these assumptions is that there exists a 'higher authority', or in Kelsen's word 'Grundnorm', that binds man-made laws universally, although the posited laws can vary in application and interpretation.

The lesson I learned from natural lawyers is that man, as stipulated in the Word of God, have continually turned away from the Creator that they have become so far apart from Him now, and this process is still going on today. That is why as the world becomes more 'modern', man's image is becoming less and less like the image of God.

'Modernity', the need to keep up with time and changes in the society, is merely an excuse or a lie created by the devil to motivate people not to remain close to God but to drift even further away from Him. Just like when your car's bearing is off, it will drift off the road. Similarly, when a person's relationship with Him is off, that person will drift of the path that he or she was supposed to be walking on.

If you study natural law, you would have found out that it has gone through three stages of development, from the Greco-Roman natural law theory(before Christ), to the Midieval Ages, and then to the secular or modern natural law theory.

You may ask what is natural about natural law? The legal theory is called natural law because it focuses on men's nature as the base for the creation of laws that governs a society. So for example, as men are physically vulnerable, laws are made to protect our physical body, hence we have law prohibiting murder and assault, etc. In the Medieval Ages, Aquinas, the leading figure in the natural law theory, added to the survival of men the need for men to be close to God as another telos(means goals) of law. Subsequently, as men drifted further away from God and started doubting His existence, the secular natural lawyers like Finnis and Fuller were prominent, but they focus only on the procedural morality of law, not the substance.

I will not be surprised if in the next 50 years another natural law theory that is based on the premises of New Agism is proposed. Clearly, man is drifting further and further away from God ever since Jesus died on the cross for our sins. It reinforces the aim of the god of this world i.e. Satan, to keep us, God's creation, away from Him and from knowing Him.

This is the natural law lesson I learned.