Natural Law and

Morality
MORAL LAW
Universal meaning: directive ordering man’s activity
towards the ultimate end. Includes obligatory demands as
well as counsels, recommendations, permissions. It
comprises common laws and personal commands. Includes
also permanent rulings.
Every genuine moral law must be good in the sense that it
must guide human activity to contribute to the realization
of the final goal of human history and of creation.
A norm which does not contribute to the final end has no
moral force binding the will.
 MORAL LAW
Narrower meaning: Directive of obligatory, general and stable
character, ordering man’s activity towards the ultimate end.
Only in this sense can moral law be the object of moral
theology.
Only rules of general and stable character can be formulated
by normative science. The unique, individual call resulting
from individual conditions escapes the normative science
Moral theology is not exclusively concerned with obligatory
but also with the advisable, expedient and permissible, but the
obligatory alone are usually called laws.
CLASSIFICATION OF LAWS
NATURAL MORAL LAW – moral order that arises from
the nature of man and creation and which cn be
recognized by man’s reason.
REVEALED LAW – norms contained in the words of the
Holy Scriptures. They may contain obligations of the
natural law or may enjoin additional obligations of
positive nature.
HUMAN LAW – norms which is coming from human
authority. This is further subdivided into civil law of the
state and the ecclesiastical law of the Church.
NATURAL MORAL LAW
Refers to those moral insights which man is able to know
by means of his reason.
NATURAL means

1. not supernatural – not communicated in a supernatural

way
2. not positive – not the result of a command of a
legislative authority
3. found and derived from the nature of man
FUNDAMENTAL RELEVANCE
1. It is the basis of a moral order of universal character
and constitute a source of ethical wisdom which
Christians share with all mankind – as it rests on common
humanity and existential conditions.
2. It is an adequate safeguard against arbitrary exercise of
political and legislative power. It is the final court of
appeal against unjust and prejudiced law of human
authorities
CONCEPT OF NATURAL LAW
TRADITIONAL CONCEPT: Law of human conduct
which arises from human nature as ordered to its ultimate
end and which is recognized by the light of reason.
The subjective medium of cognition is REASON alone,
in distinction from this, the Christian moral law has its
medium of cognition reason aided and supplemented by
faith.
PROBLEM OF THE CONCEPT OF “NATURE” – Which
is exactly this nature that serves as the source of moral
order?
Essential, metaphysical nature of man. – abstract and
uncertain, changeable conditions of man
Empirical, factual nature of man and his ideal essence. All
the physiological, biological, psychological and
sociological structures and mechanisms of human life. –
shows distortion e.g. sluggish temperament or sadistic
constitution.
Reason as the essential, primary element. – which is the
objective criterion by which reason arrives at moral law?
SOLUTION – The criterion of man’s ultimate end.
According to the definition of the natural law, human
nature is not the only objective source of the cognition of
the moral law, but combined with it is the ultimate end.
The ultimate end determines the order of priority among
the various existential ends in case especially of conflicts.
Nature alone does not provide the basis for the moral
norm.
REVISED CONCEPT

Natural law is that law of human conduct which arises from

the full reality of human nature as ordered to its ultimate end
and which is recognized by means of reason, independent of
positive Christian revelation.
Human nature is to be taken in a wide sense – full reality of
human nature with all its generic and individual traits as well
as to the nature of all those things to which man’s activity is
related, includes the share in the grace which all men possess.
The ultimate end is not merely the natural one. It is the
concrete final destiny of man which is one and the same for
all men, and divine.
PROPERTIES OF NATURAL LAW
1. UNIVERSALITY

It binds every person at all times and at all places. All are
called to attain the same final goal and to respect the
same existential ends in essentially the same way.
No one is free from the obligation of fulfilling this duty.
Even those who are temporarily or permanently without
the use of reason are not excepted from this obligation.
Whoever has the use of reason cannot remain ignorant of
the natural law for long, at least of its basic principles.
EXTENT OF THE UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE OF N.L.

The objective reality of natural law is universal but the

concrete knowledge of it is not universal in the same way. It is
subject to development and evolution.
PRIMARY PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL LAW

Norms which can be known with certainty by every normal

person in possession of one’s reason. They are self-evident
from his nature. They are evident to the practical reason.
“The known good must be done and evil must be avoided”.
Merely of formal nature. What is good and worthy of man’s
desire?
Answer is given by following principles:
 Maintain and promote your bodily life
 Maintain and promote social co-existence
 Duties of the state of life are to be answered
 Lawful authority must be obeyed
 What do you do not wish others do to you, do not do to
them
 Leave to everyone and give to every one what is his
 Contracts must be honored
SECONDARY PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL LAW

Norms that are further conclusions of natural law which

are less universally known and more readily subject to
error.
They are sub-distinguished into proximate and remote
conclusions of the natural law.
The proximate enjoy a wider range of acceptance and are
readily agreed upon. The commandments of the second
table of the Decalogue pertain to them. Also many of the
human rights belong here.
Five Natural Inclinations and the Precepts of Natural Law
Every natural inclination gives rise to precepts of the natural
law (ST IaIIae.94.2):
(1)natural inclination for the good ⇒ “do good, shun evil”
(2)natural inclination for the preservation of life ⇒ those
means which help to preserve life belong to natural law.
(3)natural inclination for the preservation of the species, i.e.
for generating ⇒ matters regarding sexuality and education
belong to the natural law.
(4)natural inclination to know the truth ⇒ precepts such as
“shun ignorance” [or do not lie]
(5)natural inclination to live in society ⇒ precepts such as
“do not offend anyone” [and generally the precepts of
justice, e.g. “don’t take the goods of another.”
The remote conclusions require a more advanced
understanding of the nature of man and are often discerned
only with difficulty.
Anyone who grasp the situation properly and can think
rightly must necessarily agree to them.
It is possible for the uneducated to be invincibly ignorant of
them for a long time.
An insufficient understanding of human nature , e.g. of the
equal dignity of women or the nature of the family, naturally
leads to deficient moral norms.
Attitude of tolerance is called for in some cultural and social
patterns which can condition moral norms.
2. IMMUTABILITY AND DYNAMICS

All things are in the process of evolution, subject to

change and historically conditioned, but beneath all the
changes there is much which is unchanging.
Immutability of natural law means that as soon as human
beings endowed with reason appeared, certain
fundamental norms concerning good and evil emerged
from their nature, and these will exist as long as human
nature exists.
There is a constant in human nature which remains
throughout all historical and cultural change.
There has been a long evolution in moral consciousness
from the days of the primeval man up to the present day,
marked by blunders and ignorance of laws which we
regard as fundamental.
This kind of evolutionary process does not signify a
mutability of natural law itself but only an alteration of
human insight into it.
The natural law is by no means a static reality, but a
reality of dynamic character. Yet this dynamics is
immutably related to the order of being from which the
natural law derives.
INDISPENSABILITY OF NATURAL LAW

No dispensation from the natural law is possible, at least

not from the side of the human authority.
Natural law exists independent of man’s assent, therefore
withdrawn from his power of free disposal.
For Christians, natural law is identical to God’s will.

The possibility that God himself may allow an exception

from natural law in some extraordinary case cannot be
simply excluded.
EPIKEIA IN NATURAL LAW

If dispensations from natural law in the true sense is not

possible, exceptions from it in an improper sense are
conceivable and indeed do occur.
Natural law is the justification for the use of epikeia with
human laws.
In order to allow the use of epikeia with the natural law,
distinction is to be made between the objective order of
natural law and the formulation of these laws in human
terms.
The objective order is the structure by which man has been
created and thus does not permit of dispensations
EXISTENCE AND ULTIMATE
BASIS OF NATURAL LAW
The existence of a moral law is a universal experience of
men. This law is a natural endowment of man.
It tells him of certain moral principles which he is bound
to obey, independently of his individual will.
There are two intrinsic reasons which confirm the
existence of a natural moral law.
1. NATURAL LAW AS REFLECTION OF GOD’S
ETERNAL DECREES
It is an essential part of the Christian doctrine that God is the
creator of the world.
The eternal plan and decrees of God, also called the eternal
law, embrace absolutely all created operations and laws of
operation
The existence of eternal laws is clear: from the Scriptures;
from the understanding that God as supremely wise cannot
act without a plan; experience and observation in cosmos
and human nature of the working out of stable laws creating
meaningful relationships between beings and a wise ordering
of the world.
2. NATURAL LAW AS BASED ON THE ORDER OF
BEING
The axiom “agere sequitur esse” means that the action is later
in temporal and logical sequence than being. It this context, it
means that the quality of an action is determined by the
quality of the being which is its cause (a thing acts according
to its nature).
In all beings the activity is conditioned and determined by
being. In non-rational beings, this is by necessity. Not so with
rational beings with free will. But, he cannot ignore the laws
of his being without suffering the consequences of such
discord.
Man’s moral obligation must be derived from and measured
by the nature of his being
In the moral order, the axiom is: the order of action must
correspond to the order of being; or: the ought rests on
what is.
Man must act in harmony with their nature. A contrary
attitude is condemned to frustration, failure and defeat.
Hence the law of human action is determined by human
nature. Consequently there is a natural moral law.
The task of moral theology is to recognized in human
beings as they are in their true nature with all their
essential relations and to derive therefrom the moral laws
which are to direct their human activity.
 CHRISTIAN FAITH and The
NATURAL MORAL LAW
The natural moral law is given, on creation, to every human being,
i.e., to those bodily beings who have been made in the "image and
likeness of God" (Gn 1.27), for it is a law rooted in the nature of
human beings (cf. Dignitatis humanae, n. 14).

The natural law is the uniquely human way in which human beings
"participate in the highest norm of human life," i.e., "the divine
law--eternal, objective, and universal--whereby God orders,
directs, and governs the entire universe and all the ways of the
human community according to a plan conceived in wisdom and in
love" (Dignitatis humanae, n. 3), for man "has been made by God
to participate in this law, with the result that, under the gentle
disposition of divine providence, he can come to perceive ever
increasingly the unchanging truth"
Purpose of Natural Moral Law
To provide human persons with the truths needed in order to
make good moral choices and in this way to make
themselves to be good persons.

Human persons make themselves to be the persons they are

in and through the actions they freely choose to do.

Human actions are not mere physical events that come and
go, for at the heart of human actions is a free, self-
determining choice that abides in the human person as a
disposition to further choices and actions of the same kind.
It is, consequently, of crucial importance for human
beings to make good moral choices. For them to do so
they must know, prior to choice, which alternatives are
morally good and which are morally bad.
The criteria enabling them to distinguish between morally
good and morally bad alternatives are moral truths, and
these truths are the truths human persons come to know
through the mediation of the natural moral law, their
uniquely human way of "participating" in God's divine
and eternal law, his wise and loving plan for human
existence.
The natural moral law, in short, is given to all human
beings in order to help them to make true judgments
about what they are to do and in the light of this truth to
make good moral choices.
 Yet the natural moral law does not enable human
beings to do the good they come to know.
They can, as personal experience tragically bears witness,
freely choose to act against the truth--they can freely
choose to do what they know to be morally bad.
Because of sin and concupiscence the human hearts on
which the natural moral law is inscribed have been
"hardened" (cf. Matt 19.8).
Indeed, while the first and common principles of natural
law can never be obliterated from the human heart, a
knowledge of its more specific moral precepts, those we
must know if we are to shape our choices and actions in
accordance with the truth, is indeed imperiled as a result
of sin and concupiscence.
The Law of Love or Grace
The persons to whom the new law of love or grace is
given are Christ's faithful, i.e., those who have been
"regenerated" in the waters of baptism. Such persons
have, through baptism, entered into the paschal mystery
of Christ.
They have "put on Christ," become incorporated into his
body, the Church, and made truly children of God,
members of the divine family. They have literally been
"divinized," for now they truly share in Christ's divine
nature just as he shares in their human nature.
Purpose of the New Law of Love
To empower them to live in Christ, to live worthily as
children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus, members of
the divine family.
 Its purpose is to enable them to walk worthily in the
vocation to which they have been called--the vocation to
be perfect, even as the heavenly Father is perfect--so that
they may attain an end not achievable by human action
and utterly beyond their human nature and powers,
namely, life eternal in the divine family, the
divine communio personarum.
The New Law of Love "fulfills" and perfects the
Natural Moral Law.
1. The law of love fulfills the natural moral law by "re-
creating" the persons to whom the natural moral law is
given on "creation." The new law of love "regenerates"
those to whom it is given, making them to be literally
"children of God," "co-heirs" with Jesus.
Through the love of God, the grace of the Holy Spirit,
which is poured into their hearts when, in baptism, they
accept in living faith the saving revelation given by God
in Jesus, Christ's faithful are inwardly transformed and
become "new" creatures in Christ.
2. By enabling, empowering those to whom it is given not
only to know but also to do both what the natural law
requires and what the new law of love makes known and
possible. it inwardly enables Christ's faithful, now new
creatures in Christ, both to know more easily the
requirements of the natural law and to do the good that it
requires.
3. The new law of love inwardly transforms the natural
law's basic moral norm, religiously expressed as love of
God and of neighbor as oneself, by further specifying it:
those to whom the new law of love are given are to love
even as they have been and are loved by God in Christ,
i.e., with a healing, redemptive kind of love.
4. The new law of love inwardly transforms the natural law's
"modes of responsibility" by specifying more precisely the
modes of response characteristic of Christians, who are to love
as Christ loves: they are to shape their choices and actions in
accord with the Beatitudes so that they will receive the
blessings promised by Jesus to his followers.
5. Fifth, the new law of love further specifies specific moral
requirements of the moral life by summoning Jesus' followers
to participate in his redemptive mission, to discern their own
personal vocation and fulfill it, to discern, with the Christian
prudence infused in their hearts, the specific requirements
demanded by the Beatitudes or modes of Christian response in
the everyday choices they must make in carrying out their
personal vocation to participate in Christ's redemptive work.
 HUMAN LAW
LAW is an ordinance of reason promulgated by
competent authority for the sake of the common
good St. Thomas Aquinas
Ordinance of reason
• Law is prudent and with purpose, not a capricious
whim.
• Law must be based on the insights of reason into
what is truly good.
• Obligatory force & not merely as recommendation
or suggestion.
Promulgated
Law is communicated w/ sufficient notice to its
subjects while respecting their rights and duties
The official publication of a LAW so that it can
come to the knowledge of the subjects is known
as promulgation
This is necessary in order that a law becomes
obligatory.
Competent authority

 Means those who have the legitimate power to do

so
For the common good

 Law is for the social betterment of its subjects

 Laws can only be enacted for the common good
& not for the private good of a few citizens.
NECESSITY of HUMAN LAW
They make clear the requirements of the
natural law
They determine the concrete norms of
conduct where the natural moral law can
be complied with in different ways
They secure the protection of those values
which are of greater moment for the
common good
Divisions:
STATE - Civil Laws – the application of
natural law in given societies
 CHURCH – Ecclesiastical Laws – the
application of divine law to the Christian
Community
Properties of Human Law
o It is enforceable
o It is concerned with external conduct only
o It is limited to particular groups
o It is historically conditioned
o It has presumptive obligatory force
o It is fallible
Conditions for Human Laws
HUMAN LAWS must:

1) Only command what is morally permitted

2) Keep within the bounds of jurisdiction of the legislator

3) Respect the demands of distributive justice

4) Not restrict rights without real need on the part of

common welfare

5) Be physically and morally possible

6) Be useful and of benefit for the common good