[Maximilian]

This article is a little bit long and difficult, but your effort will be greatly rewarded. This is the best single-article description of the Natural Law debate that I have seen. J. Budziszewski is a genius, and he has the ability to make complex arguments simple to understand.

A first glance these issues may seem abstract, but as the author points out so well, they have concrete applications to every single one of the moral issues which are troubling our society.

[yendu bwam]

bttt

[wideawake]

Thanks for posting this - it's an excellent article.

One point which he should have made is the connection between St. Thomas' conception of ethics and natural law and his conception of metaphysics.

Thomas adopts Aristotle's fundamental principle that "the good is that at which all things aim" and shows its affinity to God's commandment to Israel "I have set before you life and death, good and evil, blessing and curse: choose you therefore life" and formulates his own first principle of the natural law: "that good is to be done and pursued and evil avoided".

And St. Thomas defines good as "convertible with being" - that good actions are actions which enable man to "be" more fully. For St. Thomas only one being truly is in the fullest sense - God. So the natural law - doing good and avoiding evil - is to strive to imitate God in His being, His goodness. For St. Thomas there is no conflict between natural law and divine law - Christ became man in order to show us how natural law may most perfectly be fulfilled and He died to give us the grace to follow that perfection - so that we may have "life, and have it more abundantly".

[.45MAN]

Your right it's long but worth reading.. thanks for the Post...

[WriteOn]

I read that. I'd like to see someone tackle the vacuity of personalism and particularly phenomenology as a method. It's fine to assert natural law intuitively, but we're in the position of saying, "look what the children of Descartes have wrought." It's hard to trace the error.

[Siobhan]

It was a very worthwhile and hopeful read. I thank you very much for the ping to this fine article.

[saradippity]

Thanks for a great post!!it has captured in one article al-st everything about natural law that the many books I have read and lectures I have attended,enabled me to put in my "world view".And,it has done it clearly and concisely.

In fact I spent years accumulating the info and then spent the last several years trying to figure out how to introduce it into pertinent conversations without putting the other party into a state of utter confusion or a coma.

thaanks again and your right about the author,a genius!!