The natural moral law is a very ancient concept explained early in this thread
**Post #34: **Man is capable by his own activity of acquiring what is lacking and developing what is already possessed to fulfill his nature. So man can know his incompleteness; he can see what he is now and discover the direction of fulfillment by scrutiny of his own nature in body, mind and spirit – to achieve himself fully. As a free agent, he has an obligation to achieve himself fully, and this bond of obligation is the natural law. All that is knowable about man through psychology, history or any of the sciences is relevant to the natural law, is part of the natural law. The natural law is outside of man’s control because created by God in man’s nature.
[See Fr Paul M Quay, S.J., in *Why Humanae Vitae Was Right, Ignatius 1993, p 21-4]
The natural law says that if you want things to prosper, you have to use them in accord with their nature. If you want to grow good tomatoes, you have to treat tomato plants in accord with their nature. You have to give them sunshine and water and fertilizer and a good soil. It is something that man can discover by the basis of his own reason.
**Post #287: **The natural law and morality
tothesource.org/3_17_2010/3_17_2010_printer.htm
“The natural law is the law of human being alone—not other animals, not birds, not rocks, not trees, not planets. The natural law arises from our particular nature. It is natural insofar as it is rooted in our nature, and moral insofar as our nature defines what is good and evil for us.
“Well, just what are we? We are rational, moral animals—the only rational, moral animals. We are the one animal that must think even to survive, and the one animal whose actions are not governed by instincts but are judged by standards of good and evil. We don’t consider it cruel not to teach your dog to read, but we think that keeping children from getting an education deprives them of something they should have. We don’t jail rambunctious roosters for forcing themselves on beleaguered hens, but we send men to the slammer for rape.”
Dr Benjamin Wiker
**Post #314: **Natural Law is “a law that is in principle accessible to human reason and not dependent on (though entirely compatible with and, indeed, illumined by) divine revelation.” (
The Clash of Orthodoxies, Professor Robert P George (Princeton), 2001, p 169).
For instance the Code of Hammarubi and The 42 negative confessions of the Ancient Egyptians.
Roman jurists had already developed the maxim that any doubts in cases of freedom or slavery, should be resolved in favor of liberty.—William E. H. Lecky (1838-1903),
The Substance of History of European Morals (from Augustus to Charlemagne), 2 vols, ed. Clement Wood (New York: Vanguard Press, 1926), I, p 295.
For example, Roman jurist Domitius Ulpianus (c. 160 A.D. - 228 A.D.) had said, “by the law of nature all men are equal.”—
Digest, L, 17.32; and “natural law regards all men as equal”—
On Sabinus, Book XLIII.
Pagan Cicero, before Christ, acknowledged the natural moral law: Cicero (died 43 B.C.) wrote in De Republica, 3.22: “True law is right reason in agreement with nature. It is of universal application, unchanging, everlasting. We cannot be freed from it by Senate or people. This law is not one thing at Rome and another at Athens, but is eternal and immutable, valid for all nations and for all times. God is the Author of it, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient to it is abandoning his true self and denying his own nature.”
We have the inestimable benefit of using reason and observation, affirmed by faith (as Rodney Stark testifies in
The Victory of Reason, post #290) as the basis for the morality, and the building, of Western civilization, now in chaos due to the black night of relativism involved in all the movements against the Creator God and His handiwork.
