Orthodox
Christians are deeply concerned with laws passed in post-Christian, Western
societies that are against nature. This raises the question of what
constitutes good law and bad law. The law in America that recognised
same-sex ‘marriage’ (Obergefell v. Hodges), is a good example of bad law. Christians
are calling for the repeal of this law and Chief Justice John Roberts dissented
from it.
Laelius begins his speech on law in Cicero, On
the Republic, saying:
‘True law is correct reason congruent with
nature, spread among all persons, constant, everlasting’ (3.27).
Here we have five criteria for true law: it is reasonable, accords
with nature, is universal, is constant, and is everlasting . True law is
distinguished from the more simplistic laws of society that get passed and
repealed for expediency at a particular time, like traffic laws. Only
laws established in accordance with nature, as decreed by the gods, are true
laws. Many societies pass bad laws, like the ignorant and inefficient
physician prescribing deadly medication. Thus, ‘law is a distinction
between just and unjust things, modeled on nature, the most ancient and chief
of all things, to which human laws are directed that visit the wicked with
punishment and defend and protect the good’ (Cicero, On the Laws 2.13).
The point is that civil laws unrelated to natural law should not even be called
laws.
A law allowing or defending same-sex ‘marriage’ is a law that is
not only unrelated to nature but is a law defending what is against
nature. Such a law fails each of Laelius’s five criteria. It
is unreasonable in defying the meaning of ‘marriage’. Marriage does
not define close relationships or sexual activity, nor is a small unit of
mutually engaged persons. It is not merely a contract. That which
elevates marriage and family to something higher is where both are associated
with laws of nature. Marriage has to do with procreation that
produces a family. Same-sex ‘marriage’ only mimics this, perhaps by
borrowing children in one way or another (surrogacy, adoption). It
redefines ‘parents’ from being mother and father to being merely two adults.
Same-sex marriage is also contrary to nature. It defies
God’s intent in creation. God created male and female, with the
express command to be fruitful and multiply. Marriage between a man
and a woman is natural and God’s intended purpose for two opposite genders
becoming ‘one flesh’. Civil laws that are not grounded in natural
law are temporary and functional, like speed limit signs on a road. One
can hardly reduce marriage—the very basis of human flourishing—into something
like a speed limit law. Cicero cautions against civil laws that have
no higher source than legislative or judicial pronouncements: ‘But truly the
most foolish thing is to think that everything is just that has been approved
in the institutions or laws of peoples’ (On
the Laws 1.42). Also, ‘But we can divide good law from bad
by no other standard than that of nature’ (On
the Laws 1.44). He adds that both laws and what is
considered honourable and disgraceful must be rooted in nature (1.45). Typical
language to describe homosexuality in antiquity was that homossexuals lived
‘against nature’ (so also Paul in Romans 1.26-27). What a law
claiming that homosexual marriage is legal amounts to is a merely civil law
establishing a dishonourable practice as though it was grounded in nature when
it is not.
Same-sex marriage has never been approved in history, even if rare
instances of people in history are recorded in which two persons of the same
sex dwelt together as husband and wife. A law establishing this,
however, is something entirely new. It is not universally
acknowledged and lacks any historical warrant. It also lack constancy
because it has no historical precedent. It is a court’s ruling at a
particular time of cultural decay that will not have universal approval, will
lack constancy, and will not be everlasting.
The Church is right to speak truth to authorities, even in an
anti-creational, atheistic culture that at one time claims things to be natural
that are unnatural and at other times denies that nature plays any role in
establishing ‘local truths’. This waffling is characteristic of a
society that wishes to reject what Cicero saw as necessary: law must have
grounding in nature, and what is natural is what is grounded in God. Our
Western society is an experiment in rejecting the grounding of civil laws in
nature and under God. To this culture, the Church can join with the
Roman jurist and philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero, of the 1st century
BC, to assert, in the words of Laelius, that ‘true law is correct reason
congruent with nature, spread among all persons, constant, everlasting’. Our
challenge, however, is that what is considered right is increasingly grounded
only in law itself and not in nature and God. Cicero warned:
But if rights were established by peoples’
orders, if by leading men’s decrees, if by judges’ verdicts, there would be a
right to rob, a right to commit adultery, a right to substitute false wills if
those things were approved by the votes or resolutions of a multitude (On
the Laws 1.43).
To these examples, we might add in our day same-sex marriage.
The law affirming same-sex marriage in the USA came into effect with a 5-4 vote
of the nine Supreme Court justices–an example of what Cicero warned
against. A majority by a single vote among only nine justices created a law that opposes nature, reason, and God. Unfortunately, this is not hypothetical but a travesty, as were Cicero’s examples. We live in a dystopian culture
opposing the natural order. As
Christians, we call for the removal of so distorting and unnatural a law that
was ‘approved by the votes … of a multitude’ of five to four on the Supreme
Court. Civil laws must never be passed on matters against nature.
