The Argument Major Premise: Everything contained in the moral law derives from the greatest commandments: "love the Lord your God" and "love your neighbor as yourself." Minor Premise: The greatest commandments are knowable by nature. Conclusion: Everything contained in the moral law derives from thi… Read more…

[A term paper I wrote for my course Natural Law and Natural Rights at Davenant Hall. This version does not include citations: for those get the PDF here.] Introduction On March 17, 2022, news media around the world broke the story that Amazon acquired the famous MGM film studio. Included in this purchase were the righ… Read more…

The Sabbath Command in the Natural Law Tradition Introduction What is the nature of the Sabbath commandment? All of the Ten Commandments have been the subject of considerable controversy almost since the moment they were given to Moses, but the Sabbath has often presented particularly thorny problems. Read more…

A slightly late post from near the end of one of my classes At long last, we arrive at the locus classicus for natural law in Scripture, Romans 1-2. The first inklings of a connection to natural law starts with Paul's use of natural revelation in 1:18-23. Verse 20 in particular affirms that various truths about God are… Read more…

Divine authority and nature interplay in subtle ways in Jeremiah 1. One of the first audible notes is a peculiar dynamic God introduces into the economy of redemption: the inversion of the order of nature to magnify God's unique power and master over that order. Jeremiah is a very young man, untrained in speech, and he… Read more…

In 1 Samuel 8, Israel infamously demands that Samuel appoint for them a king. This event involves some weighty issues for the idea of law and authority. On the surface, at least in many popular readings, what happened may seem simple: God was Israel's only king, but they grew jealous of nations having tangible kings, s… Read more…

[For my Natural Law and Scriptural Authority Davenant Hall class, every other week I must write a reflection on a biblical text as it pertains to the themes of the course. This is my first of these, on Genesis 6 & 11.] Genesis 6 makes for a very peculiar case when considering natural law and the natural order more … Read more…