Introducing Natural Law Theory for the Common Man

Unfortunately, with the dramatic collapse of Christianity in the West, natural law theory has been almost totally forgotten and is considered an exotic anachronism by the West’s new and dominating atheist intelligentsia.

And most Christians, both Catholic and Protestant have been absorbing and living out the atheist worldview for nearly a century!  And to them, like any atheist, natural law theory is seen as dangerous; and as distant as the Greek culture from which it originated.

Until modern times, natural law theory was the staple brain food for the Christian people of Western Civilization. Though Greek in origin, it aligned perfectly with the Christian faith.

Saint John and Saint Paul used the Greek mode of thinking and writing to spread Christianity throughout what would become the Eastern Roman Empire.  In fact, the first sentence of the Saint John Gospel is a pyrotechnic display of the teachings of Jesus expressed in Platonist fashion:

“In the beginning was the Word.  The Word was with God.  The Word was God.”

Those three short, Greek sentences articulate the theology of the Apostle’s Creed which encapsulates the essence of the Christian faith in a single prayer.

In posts that immediately follow this one, natural law theory will be demonstrated as an intellectual tool for determining what leads to objective good in ethics and morals, politics and economics.

But what is natural law theory?

Natural law theory is based on the premise that nothing happens all by itself and that what does happen (everything that is) is based on comprehensible and ordered principles (laws).

Consequently, if we can understand the nature of a particular thing we can understand the actual, objective, universal truth about that thing.

Natural law theory is then, a way of filtering out the personal bias that for time immemorial has blinded mankind and made peace and harmony an absolute impossibility.