On the whole "death with dignity" thing

From Guy Noir: "A Protestant sermon on Euthanasia that is essentially Catholic moral theology.

"Well-done; and far more connecting in its directness than a polite interview with Rev. James Martin, I daresay."

John Piper, "We Are Not Our Own: On God, Brittany Maynard, and Physician-Assisted Suicide" (Desiring God, October 31, 2014).

[Hat tip to JM]

Confusing natural law with revelation, nature with grace

It's a debate (and a confusion) that's been around for some time now, but Ed Feser's uncommon common sense about natural law and its relation to supernatural revelation and God's grace is always refreshing.

Edward Feaser, "Natural law or supernatural law?" (Edward Feser, September 26, 2013), begins his article with some common sense observations:

When you blur a real distinction between any two things A and B, you invariably tend, at least implicitly, to deny the existence of either A or B. For instance, there is, demonstrably, a real distinction between mind and matter. To blur this distinction, as materialists do, is implicitly to deny the existence of mind. Reductionist materialism is, as I have argued in several places (such as here), really just eliminative materialism in disguise. There is also a clear moral distinction between taking the life of an innocent person and taking the life of a guilty person. To blur this distinction, as many opponents of capital punishment do, is to blur the distinction between innocence and guilt. That is why opposition to capital punishment tends to go hand in hand with suspicion of the very idea of punishment as such.

... A real distinction that is all too often blurred in theology is that between the natural and the supernatural -- between the limited relationship with God that is our natural end and the gratuitous, supernatural gift of the beatific vision; between the knowledge of God’s existence and nature that is available to philosophical reason, and that which is given only in revelation; and between the natural law and supernatural virtue. One way to blur this distinction is to collapse the supernatural into the natural -- for example, to reduce God to a symbol, and Christian charity to a mere political program for social justice. This, as Karl Barth famously put it, is not to speak of God at all but merely to speak of man in a loud voice, a kind of virtual atheism.

But another way to blur the distinction is to go in the other direction, absorbing the natural into the supernatural -- a tendency to be found in Catholic Nouvelle Théologie writers like Henri de Lubac and, it seems, in David Bentley Hart. Where morality is concerned, the tendency is, as we’ve seen recently with Hart, to denude the notion of natural law of significant content, so that it is only through the lens of revelation that one can clearly see what the natural law requires and only via grace that one can to any extent obey it. (I do not say that this is exactly what Hart himself thinks – though it seems to me he did not make it clear exactly what he thinks – but only that this is the direction in which his recent remarks about natural law tend.)

But a law that cannot be known from the nature of things, but only via special divine revelation, is not the natural law. Read more >>

[Hat tip to C.B.]

MLK would have loathed most of Obama's ideas

Beyond their common human nature and racial identity as African Americans (partial in Obama's case), the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and President Barack Hussein Obama share little in common ideologically.

Obama is a Democrat of the contemporary revisionist stripe, and champions same-sex "marriage," abortion "rights" (and even infanticide, which was more than even Hillary Clinton could stomach -- and that's saying something), and the values of moral subjectivism and relativism, which pervade his revisionist views of family values, Democratic Party principles, and even Christianity.

Martin Luther King was a Republican, condemned abortion, championed the principles of traditional Christianity and natural law, never questioned the existence of objective moral absolutes, and would have found the contemporary liberal euphemisms of "health care" and "reproductive rights" (for contraception and abortion) and "gay-friendly" disposition of most contemporary Democrats utterly loathsome.

Just how out-of-sync with contemporary Democrats Martin Luther King would have been, can be seen from his writings and speeches. His Letter from a Birmingham Jail is an excellent concise defence, among other things, of traditional Catholic natural law theory. It is striking that he appeals directly to the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine in defence of the idea that there is a higher court of appeal than human law, which may be unjust. He openly appeals to the idea of natural law and, beyond it, the eternal law of God, by which the human laws of men are ultimately judged as to whether or not they are just or unjust.

It would be amusing to remember here, if it were not so lamentable, Mr. Joe Biden's flip-flop over this issue while serving in the US Senate. When Robert Bork was nominated for the Supreme Court, Senator Biden opposed his appointment in the Senate hearings because Bork did not subscribe to a belief in natural law. Then, during the Senate hearings following Clarence Thomas's nomination for the Court, Mr. Biden opposed Thomas's appointment because he did subscribe to a belief in natural law. One thing I will say for Mr. Biden: he knows which way the wind is blowing. He would make a good weathervane.

The other work by Martin Luther King worth noting here is his famed "I Have a Dream" speech on August 28, 1963, in our nation's capital. It is in every way a milestone speech. It is eloquent. It is full of Biblical allusions and cadences. It sounds like the most eloquent of Baptist homilies, in keeping with the character of the well-educated Baptist minister that he was. The following is representative of those brilliantly allusive Biblical cadences:

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

Among the most memorable lines of the speech, however, are these:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.

Note the appeal here to "character" rather than to "color." There is nothing in King of entitlement based on race or color or ethnicity. His appeal, rather, is to something objective, "character," presupposing the existence of objective measures by which moral virtue may be judged. In short, he is appealing to the principle of "justice," which he expects everyone -- his enemies as well as his friends -- to be well aware of as a matter of natural law.

This appeal to justice is patently clear in another part of King's speech, which was egregiously mis-appropriated recently by the Rev. Al Sharpton. King said, in his speech:

In a sense we have come to our Nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed to the inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.

King's appeal is to "justice," that is, equal justice before the law; but the Rev. Al Sharpton, in his speech, after citing King's words (starting at 5:25), immediately re-interprets King's words (starting at 5:56) in terms of economic entitlement, accusing the government of withholding owed money from African Americans, along with all those enlisted in the Democratic agenda of economic redistribution in the name of entitlement and victimization.

This turns King's ideas on their head. King wants blacks to have equality before the law based on their common humanity and for them to be judged not by the color of their skin but by their character. Sharpton, like many Democrats today, is closer to wanting blacks to be treated as entitled to government tax dollars based on the color of their skin in the name of "affirmative action" -- which is certainly promoted by Obama, but would not have been by King.

Contemporary revisionist Democrats and cultural liberals and relativists like Obama cannot lay just claim to King's legacy. Their attempt to do so is as perverse as the attempt of contemporary feminists and members of the National Organization for Women and National Abortion Rights Action League to suggest that they can lay claim to the legacy of Susan B. Anthony (whose face adorns our now rare dollar coins), while in fact Susan Anthony was a staunch opponent of abortion and supported the right to life of the unborn.

How can contemporary cultural and political leftists be so morally self-righteous and yet so stupid?

Related:

• "'I Have a Dream' - 50 years on" (Cranmer, August 25, 2013) -- a good supplemental analysis.
• Time Magazine cover for its August 26/September2, 2013 issue, the "I have a dream anniversary issue," sports a headline declaring King "Founding Father," and an article entitled "Martin Luther King Jr, Architect of the 21st Century."

[Hat tip to JM]

A new skepticism about natural law?

David Bentley Hart, "Is, Ought, and Nature’s Laws" (First Things, March 2013), offered a skeptical review of natural law theories.

The piece got a lot of attention, some positive, some negative:

• R. J. Snell responded critically to Hart's position in "Understanding Natural Law: A Response to Hart and Potemra," although the piece carries an earlier publication date (Public Discourse, February 27, 2013).
• Edward Feser was another of Hart’s critics, responding in "A Christian Hart, a Humean Head" (First Things, March 6, 2013)

In the May issue of First Things, Hart responded to Feser's criticisms in "Nature Loves to Hide" (First Things, May, 2013); and now Feser has responded, in turn, to Hart, in "Sheer Hart Attack: Morality, Rationality, and Theology" (Public Discourse, April 24th, 2013 -- again, it carries an earlier publication date).

These articles are both illuminating about the contemporary state of affairs in the Catholic corner of the public square, and edifying in what they reveal about the often-misunderstood character of natural law. For those who understand the difference between natural law and natural law theories, there is no reason whatsoever to be skeptical about natural law.

One of the best books I can recommend to give the novice a sense of the foregoing, and a powerful sense of how compelling natural law argument can be is J. Budziszewski's What We Can't Not Know: A Guide.Philosophically brilliant, spiritually insightful, and psychologically shrewd, there is no other book on the subject quite like it. Highly recommended.

[Hat tip to C.B.]