A Brief Note on Sola Scriptura, Natural Law, & Authority

I’m in the middle of working on a doctoral seminar paper for a biblical ethics class and came across the following quote from John Frame in his magisterial volume The Doctrine of the Christian Life.

[N]atural law is a revelation of God’s moral standards, but one cannot argue moral conclusions from natural law apart from Scripture, without committing the naturalistic fallacy. [785]

I’ve long considered myself an enthusiastic advocate for the Natural Law (or what some Protestants may be more comfortable calling “General Revelation”). Personally, I believe Natural Law’s existence is irrefutable. Its existence persists despite humanity’s repression of it. Its potential for serving as a non-sectarian social grammar in which citizens of diverse beliefs can dialogue with one another about morality and the things that disturb the conscience are just a few ways in which I think Christians should find Natural Law helpful.

In the back-and-forth between Protestant and Catholic ethics, discussion always turns to the viability and usefulness of the Natural Law. But Frame’s quotation above also highlights a significant difference between Protestants and Catholics, especially related to ethics: authority. Protestants insist upon Sola Scriptura. This phrase, consistently maligned and wrought with confusion, doesn’t deny that there are other resources or authorities to consult when reaching conclusions. Sola Scriptura simply insists that Scripture alone will be the final or highest authority. Understood correctly, Sola Scriptura allows for a robust account of Natural Law (Romans 1:18-32; 2:12-16), but it subjects Natural Law beneath the weight of biblical revelation. We might say that Scripture is both descriptive and prescriptive about the make-up and obligations of creation and creatures. Frame goes on to say:

Do people commit a naturalistic fallacy when they derive ethical content from the created world? No, because the ethical content is not derived from valueless facts, but from the authoritative revelation of God that comes to them through the creation. [135]

To accept Frame’s argument, I think, doesn’t diminish the role of the Natural Law. It does, however, dethrone Natural Law as its own authority. A particular test case illustrates this discussion. Catholics hold that contraception is immoral since it disrupts or thwarts the natural possibility of children arising from each sexual union. Frame rejects this argument, believing that Catholics don’t hold their own belief consistently:

It is odd that the Roman Church allows for any method of birth control at all (abstinence during a wife’s fertile period), since she follows the natural-law argument that reproduction is an essential purpose of sex. If indeed reproduction is an essential purpose of sex, then we should never interfere with it, by any means at all. The distinction between natural and artificial means in this context is morally irrelevant. In both cases, there is a human intention to save sexual relations while preventing conception. If that intention is morally wrong, then carrying out that intention by periodic abstinence is just as wrong as carrying it out by the use of condoms. [786]

For Frame, Scripture does not speak definitively or clearly on the number of children that should come from a marriage. Frame views having children as an issue of obedience to the cultural mandate. And he thinks, of course, that there are sinful reasons that would lead a married couple to forgo children, but preeminently, children and openness to children are ultimately issues of biblical warrant, not Natural Law warrant. I think Frame is exactly right in principle and in application. He is right to situate Natural Law more along the lines of providing moral standards and moral grammars. Like him, I’m less inclined to believe that Natural Law can resolve all complex moral issues on its own or provide definitive justifications for reaching moral conclusions. I don’t recite any of this to enflame my Catholic friends (who, frankly, I have way more in common with than liberal Protestants), but to merely illustrate how approaches to ethics vary according to tradition.