God’s Plan for Human Nature

Law & Authority

Let’s face it — most of the trouble we have swallowing the idea that morality is good for us stems from our inherent dislike of law and authority in general. We just can’t stomach anyone telling us what we should do. And, while we have a sort of vague notion that they are necessary, perhaps even for us, we tend to view law and authority through shaded lids — as necessary evils rather than as something good. Yet, if we believe that the moral law comes from God, who is all good, how can it be a necessary evil? The problem most people have with the moral law is rooted in a poor idea of law and authority in general.

For example, when I get behind the wheel of our minivan, the 106 things on my to-do list tend to be more important than the safety of people outside of my vehicle. Not that I don’t care about them or wish them harm. It’s just that I don’t think about them. I tend to drive fast so I can get my stuff done. However, law and authority have established speed limits. Now, it is easy for me to view these speed limits as impediments to my efficiency, as nothing more than a pain in the butt. But what is the purpose of a speed limit? Don’t speed limits exist precisely for the safety of others? The law and authority behind the speed limits guide me to the good of the safety of others when my ignorance or my selfish keep me from from achieving that good myself.

The Moral Law: God’s Guidance to Authentic Good

That is precisely the purpose of law and authority. They exist to guide us to authentic human goodness that we are either too sinful or too ignorant to choose ourselves. In fact, because all good comes from God, all legitimate law and authority (that which leads us to authentic human goodness) ultimately come from God as well. God’s law governs everything toward what is good.

The laws of nature create order in the created world, and are discoverable by science. In human life, we are governed by the moral law. The moral law is the ultimate of such authority. It leads us to the objective goodness that ultimately defines who we are and defines our eternal destiny.

The Natural Moral Law: God’s Guide to Being Truly Human

The moral law can be divided into the natural law and the divine law. The natural law is God’s plan for human nature. Since we can study human nature through the sciences and through reasoning we can know what the natural law says through human intelligence. God does not need to reveal it to us (of course, because He loves us He does reveal it to us anyway). The divine law is God’s plan for human beings to live in a loving covenant relationship with Him. Since having a relationship with God is a mystery to us because God is a mystery to us we need His help to know what the divine law is. God reveals the divine law to us through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.

St. Paul calls the natural moral law the law written in the human heart. Often this is the only definition of the natural law that teachers give. But what exactly does it mean? There is part of the natural law that is so inherent to human life that we do not need to be taught about it. We do not need to be taught that murder of an innocent person is evil. Parents do not need to be told that the lives of their children are a good to be protected. Theologians call this an inherent law “synderesis.”
However, most of the natural law is not automatically known. To say that the natural moral law is written in the human heart is really to say that it is central to what it means to be a human being. The natural law is based on human nature. To follow the natural law means to fully realize what it means to be human. Here are some tenets of natural law that we will explore in more detail:

• Do good and avoid evil
  In the most basic natural law context, good and evil are defined as what is authentically good for us as complete human beings or what is not.
• Become more human by rightly proportioning the strength and influence of our spiritual and physical faculties
• Exercise true freedom by choosing the best possible good
• Live in community with each other, seeing the other’s good as at least as important as our own.

So what is natural law in a nutshell? It is the law based on human nature, known through human reason, that leads us to be truly human and to attain authentic human goodness. It is God’s plan for our natural happiness. When follow the natural moral law, we are on our way to becoming who He created us to be.