Natural Law?
If you haven't noticed yet, we're not big on modernist notions of truth around here. Thus, as you can probably guess, I am not much of a believer in Natural Law. There is certainly a strain of Mormon thinking that has attempted to identify with the Natural Law tradition. Do we do this because there is something valuable about the Natural Law tradition besides its intellectual heritage? Does this actually have anything to offer us Mormons, or is it leading us down precisely the path that the Restoration veered from in the first place?
The problem with Natural Law is that it always seems to be changing. It's representation is always mediated by human beings. However, the risk of arguing that Natural Law is simply a reflection of a particular culture's values is that there is no basis for critiquing another culture's practices. The result is relativism, which for some reason makes a lot of people uncomfortable. I tend to see relativism as simply a fact and deal with it. To me, the wrong response to relativism is to keep asserting that it isn't there.
So, is it possible to disambiguate Mormonism from Natural Law? Is this desirable? Is Natural Law really as dispensable as I assume?
1 comment:
Hi, It maybe because I'm quite new to this discussion (but already filled a blog), but if in your view natural law is open to interpretation (if I understand you correctly), it can't be a law. Laws are facts, facts aren't opinion. They don't change. As you probably know Pope Benedict XVI isn't too keen on subjectivism either, but is an ardent subsciber to natural law. Would you care to elaborate.
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