Protestants’ New (?) Love of Natural Law

Evangelical Protestants have long debated how best to approach cultural engagement. While arguing alongside Catholics that religion must be part of the public square, they have diverged on how this is best achieved. Enter natural-law thinking. For the past two decades, there has been a recovery of the natural law as the ground for civil law and morality. This recovery came in the face of Protestant resistance for most of the twentieth century. 

Some evangelicals have suggested that C. S. Lewis’s appeal to objective moral truths in The Abolition of Man is the way forward in a pluralist society. Writing for First Things in 2006, J. Daryl Charles was one of the first to defend the Protestant recovery of natural law. He endorsed its use in the public square, stating, “One of the most important lessons we Protestants can learn from those who have championed the permanent things is that public morality must rest on public principles—principles that are rooted in the fabric of creation.” Natural-law thinking is a rehabilitation of what Reformers referred to as civil righteousness or justice. 

The first book-length attempt was Stephen Grabill’s Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics. Building on his article in First Things, the following year J. Daryl Charles published Retrieving the Natural Law. Two decades on, natural-law thinking has entered the mainstream of evangelical scholarship. 

One need look no further than Natural Law: Five Views in Zondervan’s Critical Points Series, the offspring of the larger Counterpoints Series. This is an important development that warrants close attention. It resulted from ecumenical engagement, as well as a Reformed and Lutheran ressourcement over the past forty years. One quibble I have, however, is that the discussion leaves out the Wesleyan tradition. Natural law remained an option among Wesleyans despite its rejection by Reformed and Lutheran thinkers. Wesley had argued for it, and used it in his argument against slavery.

Unpacking the history and issues of Protestant perspectives on natural law unlocks one facet of the Protestant mind over the past century. Before turning to the history, it is worth noting three components in defining natural. 

The first is an appeal to a moral order that originates with God and is part of creation. The universe is not simply governed by physical laws but also by moral laws that function analogously to physical laws. Part of the design of creation, these moral laws orient human beings toward their purpose. “Natural” in this first instance means the structure of creation. 

The second is an appeal to the constitution of the human person. The moral order does not simply exist in the world around humans; it is part of human nature. Analogous to the drive to eat, there are basic moral drives woven into each person, which manifest in moral judgments like “you should not murder.” Humans are not simply oriented to a larger purpose by external laws. Their own drives and desires orient them to it. Moral intuitions and inclinations stem from the moral structure of the human person, not simply from society. “Natural” in this second instance refers to a common human nature. 

The third is an appeal to universally knowable moral principles. It is not simply that there is an objective moral order in creation that is baked into human nature, it is that humans can know and act upon this order. Similar to how scientists can send astronauts to the moon by following the laws of physics, humans can organize their individual and collective life by following the moral laws. In doing so, they can realize their purpose as humans. 

Why did some Protestants reject natural law? 

The Protestant rejection of natural law first occurred in Reformed circles. Two of the three dominant strands of Reformed theology did so for similar reasons. Concerned with the way Nazism had manipulated law, Karl Barth identified the problem with the way nineteenth-century German theology had reduced natural law to rational analysis of the human person. This secularized approach sowed the seeds of Nazi ideology in part because it did not take the condition of sin seriously. Barth’s resounding “no” to natural law and natural theology meant a full-throated defense of the revelation of God in Christ that radically altered the landscape of fallen life. 

Barth’s approach had a broad impact on Protestant views. In his three volumes on theological ethics, the Lutheran theologian Helmut Thielicke rejected the use of natural law on the basis of human sinfulness. He applied Luther’s theological and civil use of the law to convict of sin and restrain its evolution. If there was any moral content in humanity, it served only a negative purpose. 

From the Anabaptist perspective, John Howard Yoder used Barth’s questioning of natural law and natural revelation. Preferring the biblical witness, he grounded morality in the teachings of Jesus as transmitted through the discipleship practices of the local church. It was an ecclesiological approach devoid of appeals to law outside of the Christ-centered practices of the followers of Jesus. Even though he was Methodist, Stanley Hauerwas largely utilized Yoder’s approach, rooting it in the need for the Church to tell the story of human existence in order to cultivate moral virtue among the people of God. For Hauerwas, natural law was no more than an exegetical principle to interpret the Old Testament, not a universal morality. 

Like Barth, Neo-Calvinist Cornelius Van Til argued against natural theology and natural law on the basis of human sinfulness. After the fall, one cannot separate natural theology from a thoroughly distorted religious consciousness born out of ethical alienation from God. Van Til states that the “deadness of man in sin is an ethical deadness” (his emphasis). All roads from natural theology and natural law lead to an affirmation of human autonomy fundamentally opposed to God and God’s law. All that remains of the knowledge of God serves to condemn humans. It can never be deployed to develop anything other than a system outside of God. 

Following Van Til, R. J. Rushdoony argued that the supernaturalism of Christian orthodoxy meant that the laws of God were over nature rather than stemming from nature. However one defines “nature,” it cannot reflect God’s law because it is fallen and in rebellion. In Rushdoony’s mind, “natural-law thinking has never contributed anything to morality” (his emphasis). Christian reconstructionism fully denied that the natural law could lead to anything positive. Only the revealed law could be trusted.

Carl Henry was also influenced by Neo-Calvinism. While Henry affirmed that being made in the image of God meant humans retained a moral sense, this sense functioned in judgments of conscience and primarily led to internal conviction—insufficient for building a natural law theory. Henry could affirm with Lewis that one can find common moral judgments across cultures, but also reject what he saw as Aquinas’ attempt to build them into a moral system. Personal moral judgments are too fragmentary to be of use, and therefore the special revelation of scripture is the only firm basis for a Christian approach to morality.

Writing for First Things in 1995, Henry marshalled arguments from Barth, Hauerwas, and others to reject natural law. His rejection was based on confusion over what counts as nature in light of evolution and the reality of fallen life. He concluded, “What moral power, then, can serve as a potent restorative and cohesive social force? Nothing other than respect for the commandment of God given at the creation of the human race.”

There were three dominant themes from this Protestant critique of natural law. The first stemmed from a doctrine of sin: Humans were so thoroughly warped that all moral systems developed outside of scripture were reflections of human autonomy—the human person in moral revolt from God. In this context, apologetics is largely a negative discipline of unearthing false presuppositions to make room for the proclamation of the gospel. 

Closely related to the first critique, the second concerned how to define “nature” in the wake of material views of humanity and secular humanism. If humans are animals, then appeals to nature are functionally appeals to the animal kingdom. This point closely resembles Andrew Sullivan’s criticisms of Catholic views of natural law when he argued for gay marriage in Virtually Normal (1995). Evolution had altered how human nature was defined. Between evolution and secular theories about human nature, Protestants felt justified in their claim that no moral system could be developed from appeals to natural law. 

The final critique came from postliberal Protestants. It was driven by ecclesiology. At best, one can only give a theological account of natural law by appealing to the story of the Church. Grounded in the teachings of Christ and the scripture, it is the Church’s story that is universal. Hauerwas successfully leveraged the Wesleyan appeal to testimony and narrative into Yoder’s Anabaptist message of the Church. The shared Wesleyan and Anabaptist insistence on holiness as separation from the world was pressed into a criticism of natural law. 

What changed, and what didn’t?

The return to natural law among Reformed Protestants occurred through a desire to appeal to universal moral norms that can serve a pluralistic society. This is one of the goals of J. Daryl Charles’s works on natural law. Not all Reformed scholars are convinced. There remains a debate over how John Calvin used natural law. Was it simply part of Calvin’s explanation for why all stand condemned before God by their own conscience, or could it be used to govern civil society? What changed was a renewed effort by Protestants to develop natural-law approaches to morality; what didn’t change was the debate as to whether this was possible.

The role of natural law in Wesleyan and Anglican thought also did not change. Since Wesleyanism comes out of the Church of England, Wesleyans and Anglicans share a common heritage. The three streams of the Wesleyan tradition (Methodism, Holiness, and Pentecostalism) all retained the idea that God’s law is woven into human nature through the natural law. What connects these streams is the emphasis on holiness, which is partly why natural law retained an important place. 

For Wesley, the natural law primarily meant human nature. Following Augustine, Wesley argued that human nature had a moral and social design. He appealed to common human nature as part of his argument against slavery. 

Wesley answered the Protestant rejection of natural law on the basis of sin by appealing to the work of the Holy Spirit in the human heart. The Spirit moves in and through human love to make moral judgments possible. It’s not simply that God has designed humans with a moral structure; it’s that the Spirit awakens the mind through moral intuitions. A natural-law ethic builds on these moral intuitions by articulating minimal moral principles, such as that all humans are equal in their dignity, and therefore should not enslave one another. 

In the twentieth century, this Wesleyan approach can be found in the Methodist ethicist Paul Ramsey and his famous Anglican student Oliver O’Donovan. In Nine Modern Moralists, Paul Ramsey embraced natural law within the framework of Christ transforming and elevating human nature. He allowed for appeals to natural justice as long as one recognized how love automatically transformed such appeals. It is both love and justice in every moral decision.

Ramsey rejected rationalistic approaches to natural law that interpreted it as a system of deductive reasoning from more general principles. He argued that natural justice flows from moral inclination as humans apply these inclinations to specific cases. I come to know that I should not kill when faced with a circumstance where another human life is at stake. In that context, my own love reveals the precious nature of life, and beats upon my conscience that this particular life should not be taken. 

By rejecting a more rationalist approach to natural law, Ramsey dealt with another criticism. Protestants criticized natural-law theories that seemed to elevate human autonomy. Some versions of natural law divorced a philosophy of human nature from its theological ground. This more secularized version of natural law reduces it to what can be found in human nature, which is itself vitiated by sin in the soul and society.

Here is where Ramsey anticipated Catholic thinkers like Russell Hittinger. In his analysis of Pope John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor, Hittinger showed how the pope understood the natural law as a participation in the eternal law. One cannot formulate any full approach to the natural law outside of this theological context. It is an important critique that Hittinger aims at the new natural law theory articulated by John Finnis, among others. Morality flows from the bonds humans have to themselves, one another, creation, and God. These bonds are built into the social fabric of life.   

Ramsey’s student Oliver O’Donovan developed the basic approach to natural law in Resurrection and Moral Order, although O’Donovan preferred not to use the phrase. He remained concerned about all the baggage from centuries of debate and discussion of natural law. It was better, in O’Donovan’s mind, to speak of a structure to creation that orders humans toward their purpose in this life and the next. Christ redeems rather than annuls creation; grace perfects nature.

Despite its somewhat tortured history, natural-law thinking has much promise. While sympathetic to O’Donovan’s desire to leave behind the phrase, it strikes me as still useful. We use law to refer to the laws of physics governing the universe. These laws do not exist outside the structure of life. They are not imposed from above, but flow in, with, and through matter and energy, organizing it into forms that give life. These laws evince a design to creation. It is this design that the term law ultimately points toward. 

These laws don’t simply point to an inherent structure; they move creation toward a goal. Scientists can discern the purpose of human organs and human cells in relation to one another, even if they have yet fully to penetrate the mystery of the human cell. They reveal purpose. The modern age has tried to strip away structure and purpose from life with disastrous effects.

The natural law, then, refers to how God has structured creation and human nature so as to push the whole toward its full realization. As J. Daryl Charles notes, there is an objective moral order to which the natural law points. I am reminded of the way Louis Perry argued her way into Christianity through sociological analyses of human life. She came to see that human existence had a particular structure that feminist narratives simply ignored at the expense of women. This is a kind of natural-law approach. 

The challenge of such approaches, however, is that the insights of natural law require a theological ground from the outset. Paul Ramsey and Oliver O’Donovan have taught Protestants as much. In making this claim, they have brought Protestantism one step closer to the accounts of natural law one finds in Catholic thinkers like Russell Hittinger.

Ryan Anderson and Andrew Walker, Natural Law: Five Views (2025)

J. Daryl Charles, Retrieving the Natural Law: A Return to Moral First Things (2008)

Stephen J. Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics (2006)

Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics (1986)

Paul Ramsey, Nine Modern Moralists (1962)

Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality (1995)