Robert Barron - The Natural Law

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Peace be with you. Friends, for this 15th Sunday of ordinary time, we get to read from the book of Deuteronomy, which is a marvelous text, of course, in the Old Testament. It means literally the second law. And so a lot of it’s about the laws and commandments God gives to his people. There’s a line though in this passage that’s really interesting because Moses talks to the people about the law not being kind of up there, out there someplace, some external arbitrary command given from on high, but rather what?

Listen, «for this command I am joining you today is not too mysterious and remote for you. It’s not up in the sky that you should say, who’d go up in the sky to get it for us? No, it’s something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your heart. You only have to carry it out». Well, it’s a master text for what we call in the Catholic tradition, the natural law. Maybe you’ve heard that term when people talk about the moral life. There’s a natural law theory. What it means is exactly this, that there is within us a kind of deep moral intuition by which we know the right thing to do. There’s a set of, call them intuitions of value that give us a sense of meaning, purpose, and direction in life. We can read with our rational minds certain moral intelligibilities. The Ten Commandments, you might say, would be an explicitation of this natural law.

You know, C.S. Lewis talked about the Tao, like from Taoism, but what he meant was this basic sense of morality that’s shared across the world, across the cultures. But where’s that coming from? It’s not coming from arbitrary commands within the given religions, but rather from this sense of the heart of what the good life is and what it looks like. So let me say just a few things in this sermon about the natural law, about this idea. Thomas Aquinas, my intellectual hero, is one of the great theorists of the natural law. He says, first of all this, here’s the first principle of the natural law. It’s akin to the first principle of reasoning, which is the principle of non-contradiction.

Something can’t be true and not true at the same time in the same respect. That’s not something we discover scientifically. We know it intuitively. But all of our rational thinking is predicated upon it. Well, in a similar way, here’s the first principle of the moral life. Do good and avoid evil. You might say, okay, that’s rather obvious, isn’t it? Well, look around our culture today. Anything but obvious. What’s the standard view of many people today? Oh, morality, there’s nothing objective about it. It’s just whatever you like and whatever I like and I should tolerate you, you should tolerate me, and no one really knows right from wrong and don’t lay your value trips on me.

That whole schema, that relativistic, individualistic subjectivism is repugnant to the first principle of the natural law, which is there really is something good and you ought to seek it. And there really is something evil and you ought to avoid it. Notice too, everybody, this principle stands behind the most fundamental decision anyone can make, which is what kind of person do I want to be? So prior to any particular moral choice, and I’m going to do this or that, there’s this foundational moral choice. Am I someone who really seeks the good and really seeks to avoid what’s evil?

Now again, you might say, oh, that’s obvious. It’s not obvious, not at all. There are an awful lot of people, and all of us sinners to varying degrees fall under this heading, but a lot of people say, just whatever’s good for you, whatever’s convenient for you, whatever makes your life more comfortable, that’s what you should do. No, the first principle of the natural law written in the heart is do the objectively good and avoid what’s objectively evil, and you’ll become the kind of person you want to be. Principle one, principle one.

Now, we can instantiate this further. Now welcome to natural law theology, natural law philosophy. We can specify this, and I’m going to use the thought here of John Finis. John Finis is a moral philosopher, been around for a long time, and wrote a book called Natural Law and Natural Right about 40-some years ago, that lays this out, I think, in a very persuasive way. He talks about the basic goods. What are those? They’re the basic objective values that we recognize as values because of the kind of beings we are. Because we’re structured the way we are, there are certain things that we naturally seek that we recognize as objectively good, and the moral life is structured according to these basic goods. I should seek them, and I should seek to avoid that which is repugnant to them. Now I have a structure for my moral life.

You say, «Okay, well, what are these basic goods»? Here’s the first one, Finis says, and he’s echoing Thomas Aquinas here. Life. Life is a basic good. Life is of value. Life is something we should seek. Life is something we should seek to enhance. Concomitantly, we should avoid, we should be opposed to whatever is opposed to life, whatever undermines life, whatever gets in the way of it, whatever attacks it, we should be against that. We should foster life and stand to thwart the ways of death. You know what comes to mind here? John Paul II, who spoke of the culture of life and the culture of death.

Now, get even more specific here. Why do we have traffic laws? Speed limits and stop signs and traffic lights and all. Well, because we’re seeking life. We’re seeking to protect life. Now, go to the other extreme of the legal system. Why are there laws against murder? Same reason, same reason. We’re against that which is repugnant to life. Why did Thomas Jefferson speak of a right to life? Well, because he intuited this basic good, that one of the most fundamental roles of the government is to preserve our right to life. Now Catholic moral theology, people can find confounding sometimes, of this principle. We’re for the culture of life. We want those things that foster life and we’re opposed to the ways of death.

Okay, here’s the second basic good, according to Finnis. Knowledge. All right, because the kind of people we are, we’re in fact rational animals, Aristotle said, we recognize that knowledge is a value. It’s better to know than not to know. What cultivates knowledge is a good thing. And the thwart knowledge is a bad thing. Our moral lives should be structured accordingly. Now think for instance, a society like ours that fosters education, that recognizes public education, private education as both very good things.

Again, Jefferson comes to mind. He recognized in a healthy democracy there’s got to be a strong sense of public education. Why do we sponsor schools and universities and colleges? Why would the church sponsor schools and colleges and universities? Same idea. We think knowledge is worth pursuing. And we want to get in the way of whatever blocks people’s access to knowledge. That’s why we’re against fake news and superstition and stupidity on the public stage, because we recognize knowledge as something worth seeking. Here’s the third one, according to Finnis, which I love, and I’ve talked about it before because it’s grounded in the great tradition. Play is a basic good.

You say, «Well, that sounds kind of trivial. What do you mean play»? Play, I mean, those things that are sought for their own sake, just because it’s wonderful to do them. So again, think of someone, whether it’s a kid or it’s a professional baseball player, playing, we say appropriately, playing baseball. Baseball is not productive. Baseball doesn’t produce something outside of itself. It’s not subordinated to a higher end. Baseball is beautiful in itself, beautiful to play, beautiful to watch. The arts are like this. Why do we go to a play? Why do we go to theater? Why do we go to a concert? Because it’s beautiful. It’s worth seeking for its own sake.

Watching a Shakespearean drama is a type of play, just as going to the baseball game is a type of play. Are we worried, should we be worried, about a society becoming increasingly technocratic and pragmatic? I think so. One that doesn’t reverence the way it should, the beauty and value of play. A society that is, you know, it reverences the machine and convenience and what gets you there fast. But what do you do when you get there fast? What do you do when the conveniences around us make life easier? Well, now the door should be open to play. And so in your personal life, in your cultural life, we should foster play. We should oppose that which is a thwart to play.

Here’s a fourth basic good for Finnis, what he calls sociability. You know, you might use the term friendship. It’s not good for the man to be alone, we hear in the book of Genesis, right? We’re made for communion. We’re made for society. Again, go back to Aristotle. We are political animals. That just means animals that live in a polis or live in a city. And for Aristotle, a polis, we think city like Chicago or Paris. It would be like a little tiny village by our standards. Someone that lives though in a community where he can be in vibrant contact with people around him. We think that’s a moral good.

And so we should, in our own personal lives and societally, seek those things that make friendship, connection, sociability easier. And we should be opposed to those things that undermine it. I’ll give you one example. And a lot of people are talking about it today, is all the machines, all the iPhones and iPads and all the stuff that we have and we rely on them. But what are they doing to us? And I love how even physically it’s becoming symbolic, this looking down at the phone and everyone’s got this sort of bend in their neck now from looking at these machines.

And what are they doing? This preoccupation with virtual reality. It is severing indeed, ties to the wider world and to friendship and to community. Why is it a lot of young people today, they say they’re afraid when the doorbell rings, they’re afraid when the phone rings because their life is so mediated by these machines? Well, that’s a societal and personal problem because sociability or friendship is a basic good. Let me give you one more. I’m skipping some here out of a conserved for time, but maybe the most important one. And Thomas Aquinas agrees with this too.

Religion. Religion is a basic good. That is to say, our connection to a transcendent value. Yeah, we can see values around us like play and knowledge and sociability and life, etc. But all those values are arranged hierarchically in relation to a highest value, a highest good. You want the details, look at Aquinas' fourth argument for God’s existence. All the values that we intuit are related finally to a highest and transcendent value. We are wired for God, and all the great spirits have known this.

Augustine knew it most famously when he said, «Our hearts are restless, Lord, because you’ve made us for yourself». The natural laws, he recognizes the importance of this transcendent value, which is why personally and again societally we should foster religion. That’s why societies from time immemorial have gotten behind religion, encouraged its teaching, encouraged its institutions, encouraged people to participate in it.

Modern secularism is egregious. It’s egregious across the cultures and across time. A society which is set aside the transcendent good. That runs counter to the heart, to the deepest sense of value. So in your own life and societally. Again, go back to the founding fathers. Why in the First Amendment is the free exercise of religion recognized as a fundamental right? Because of this. Religion is a basic good. Therefore we should seek it, and we should oppose all that stands athwart to it.

So everybody, the moral life, «Oh, it’s just a matter of subjective opinion». No, it is not. That’s one of the great mistakes of our time. Don’t fall into that trap. As Moses told us long ago, the law is not up there, out there. It’s not something arbitrary. It’s in our hearts. We intuit these great values, and then we structure our lives in accord with them. You wonder why your life is getting off the rails. You wonder why you’re finding yourself so chronically unhappy. It could well be that you are running counter to this natural law. And God bless you.