Abstract
In Nature and Command, Clanton and Martin make a helpful contribution to the ongoing interdisciplinary and ecumenical discussions amongst theologians and philosophers seeking to overcome the historical divide between a morality grounded in Divine Command Theory (DCT) and Natural Law Theory (NLT). [For other important examples of some of these other discussions, see e.g. Mark Murphy, God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Russell Hittinger, The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2003); David VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order: A Biblical Theology of Natural Law (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014); Jennifer Herdt, Assuming Responsibility: Ecstatic Eudaimonism and the Call to Live Well (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.)] Throughout this book, the authors explore the possibility for rapprochement between these two foundational ‘metaphysical foundations of morality’ by arguing that the theological and philosophical divisions between DCT and NLT have a ‘history and hence that the divide is contingent’ (p. 154, emphasis original). In addition, the authors seek to make a constructive contribution to the discussion by introducing into the debate the combination of the two approaches developed in the little-explored Stone-Campbell Restoration tradition.
In Part I, the authors undertake the descriptive tasks of providing a helpful overview of the current state of the debate between natural law theorists and divine command theorists in contemporary philosophy and theology. While they engage with a fairly wide range of theologians and philosophers considering these questions, perhaps the most helpful aspect of their work in this first part is their thorough taxonomy of the standard objections from DCT theorists to NLT and vice-versa.
While the first part provides a helpful overview and evaluation of the current state of the field, the second part is even more valuable due to the authors’ constructive work. In chapter 3, aptly entitled ‘Whence the Divide?’ the authors explore the historical and theological developments leading to the split between the two systems. The section begins with an overview of Aquinas, as perhaps the most significant proponent of natural law theory. Wisely, the authors largely steer clear of much of the vast literature related specifically to Aquinas's natural law theory and the intermural debates on Aquinas. Rather, they seek to demonstrate that in many ways Aquinas embodies a more robust integration of NLT and DCT than seemed available to his philosophical and theological heirs. While the arguments are compelling, I was surprised that they neglected to mention the importance of Aquinas's reliance of Scripture as informing his entire natural system. As Jean Porter has demonstrated in Natural and Divine Law: Reclaiming the Tradition for Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), reading Aquinas and the broader canon law tradition as resourced by Scripture returns natural law to its proper place in the scholastic tradition. In addition, the section might have been expanded to consider some of the later Catholic attempts to integrate natural and divine law in the scholastic heirs to St. Thomas, such as Francisco Suárez, SJ. However, despite these requests for more on the Catholic side, the chapter is especially valuable in tracing out the intellectual genealogy which led to the rejection of the natural law on the Protestant side.
Moving forward in time from the unified theory of high scholasticism, Clanton and Martin identify the division between DCT and NLT with the development of a Franciscan voluntarism, articulated to some degree by Duns Scotus and more fully by William of Ockham. This tradition was then appropriated during the Protestant Reformation—leading to a split of theories accompanying the split of ecclesial bodies. While the narrative arc itself is familiar to students of DCT and NLT, the introduction of several of Ockham's successors provides some helpful expansion on the development of a radical divine command theory and explains the hostility which characterizes the divide and perhaps even powered some of the Protestant polemics of the early Reformation. The authors make an especially useful contribution in their reading of Janine Marie Idziak's work in considering the important role of the less explored Franciscan Andrew of Neufchateau in developing and expanding Ockham's DCT to create a system which construes ‘all features of morality as a function of the divine will’ (p. 129). The authors then trace the development of this continued polarization through the work of the French cardinal D’aily who not only rejects but demonstrates active ‘contempt for lawyers and for the study of law’ (p. 143, emphasis original). From D’aily, they trace a less contemptuous but equally firm trajectory to Gabriel Biel's ‘unambiguous affirmation of a fully reductive DCT position about the metaphysical foundations of morality’ (p. 147). From Biel, the road of non-compromising DCT runs straight to Martin Luther. The authors then locate Calvin in this same trajectory—although like Aquinas they perhaps too quickly elide over the complexity of his thought and especially his actual (somewhat conflicted) articulation of natural law theory, focusing instead on his doctrine of election. However, overall, this section admirably serves its purpose of demonstrating both that the theological and philosophical divisions between DCT and NLT have a ‘history and hence that the divide is contingent’ (p. 154, emphasis original).
Having considered both the history and the current state of the field, the authors turn to the Stone-Campbell Restoration tradition to provide a very interesting and constructive account of the combination of NLT and DCT. The Stone-Campbell tradition has not been broadly considered as contributing to discussions related to specific meta-ethical theory. However, as Clanton explored in the earlier Restoration and Philosophy (J. Caleb Clanton, Restoration and Philosophy: New Philosophical Engagements with the Stone-Campbell Tradition, Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2019), the Stone-Campbell movement was in fact resourced by a specific philosophical tradition. Clanton and Martin here helpfully demonstrate the importance of this philosophical metaphysics to the tradition's development, despite the tradition’s theological emphasis on the pure authority of the Bible. Their research helpfully illustrates the importance of philosophy for resourcing traditions which can easily be perceived as containing simply a pure reliance on Scripture. By troubling this distinction within a Protestant tradition which one might assume would reject NLT in favour of DCT alone, the authors also begin to challenge the intellectual and terminological distinctions which are often perceived as dividing DCT and NLT. Specifically, drawing on the Stone-Campbell tradition, the authors advance the theory that the combined approach might acknowledge the importance of both divine and natural law, but sees both as ‘being given explanatory priority over only a distinct domain or subset of the moral law’ (p. 168). Setting aside the question (which is far too expansive for a review) as to the success of their approach in combining the two, this new approach (and overall book) achieves several important goals. First, by finding the possibility of rapprochement, the authors demonstrate the historicity and contingency of the divide between the two schools of metaphysics. Secondly, they show how exploring new perspectives and new traditions may in fact helpfully contribute new perspectives and approaches to what might appear to be an intractable 800-year-old problem.